Different breeds of Ball Pythons?

So I am very new to snakes. I recently bought a ball python. Since I joined this site a week or two ago I have seen many posts about "yellow belly" or "clown leopard" and terms like "morph". I assume its basically the different types and colors and such of ball pythons. Can someone explain or comment a link explaining this? Does every Ball Python have a little something different in them?

Im also interested in the White Pythons. I have seen pictures of White Pythons with spots of regular color in them. I saw one at the pet store today and it was beautiful. How do they get them white and how much do those ones usually sell for?

Every animal including ball pythons has a wild type, typically referred to in this hobby as normal and other MUTANTS!!! haha

In the BP hobby these mutants are referred to as morphs. These are genes that influence color and patterning in, as you've noticed various different ways.

Some of these influences are actually deleterious, meaning bad. Not necessarily unhealthy but mutations that affect the animal in a way that keeps it's pigmentation from occurring the way it should. These white animals should not be confused with albino animals and are in fact a defect known as leucism. Snakes get their skin pigmentation instructions along their spine and the leucistic defect prevents this from happening, there by making a white animal with lack of pigmentation instructions not lack of pigmentation as is albinism.

This can happen when an animal gets two copies of the defective gene from it's parents... Fire, Leser, Mojave, Butter and others have been found to be carriers of this defective trait and when combined with another of themselves or in some cases others (which means they share a locus for this defective gene) they turn out white because they have no healthy version of the gene.

What you found that is white with patches of normal color is another genetic trait called piebald. It is different from these above examples in that you cant tell a heterozygous (one copy of the gene) for an animal without this gene. This is called a recessive trait. However like the examples above when to parents come together and both contribute a defective gene to the child so that no healthy gene exists the kids express and come out piebald.

Honestly genetics can be very difficult to understand, I would suggest that you go to wiki and just start reading. Also there is a book that talks about the actual structure of DNA and how it can be altered, both naturally and artificially, that might be helpful to be able to picture some stuff in your head. It is called Recombinant DNA, you can find it on amazon.

This is the best website to go to and learn about the different types of ball python morphs and their genetic makeup:

http://www.worldofballpythons.com/wizard/

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Originally Posted by Saber402

This is the best website to go to and learn about the different types of ball python morphs and their genetic makeup:

http://www.worldofballpythons.com/wizard/

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You could have just put a period after your sentence. THIS is a pretty good site to learn from too if you take advantage of the search function. :gj:

Thanks. I understand genetics fairly well. I was just wondering about it.