How many ball python combinations are there?

I was having a conversation about ball pythons with a neighbor who knew nothing about snakes. I told him that it was all about making neat combinations of different genes. His response was, 'hasn't everyone made all the possible combinations yet?'. That got me thinking, how many possible combos are there?

So I decided to look into this a little further. According to the latest numbers on World of Ball Pythons there are 308 base morphs. I also decided to use an online 'Combinations and Permutations Calculator'.

https://www.mathsisfun.com/combinato...alculator.html

According to the math there are 308 single gene mutations possible.

And there are 47,278 double gene combos possible.

And with three genes 4,822,356 combos

And four genes 367,704,645 combos

And five genes 22,356,442,416

That's 22 BILLION possible five gene combos!!!


(This assumes no repetition allowed and the order is not important)

The limits of the combos is our understanding of them. I am sure one day when we master genetics on a molecular level we will invent a few more.

And.... there are still new base morphs being found every year... so that number will keep going up. Not sure we will ever run out of new mutations... makes me wonder why ball pythons mutate so much in the first place, compared to other reptile species the number of morphs is staggering.

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Originally Posted by Alter-Echo

makes me wonder why ball pythons mutate so much in the first place, compared to other reptile species the number of morphs is staggering.

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Hard to know if that's even the case since we collect and breed 100x more ball pythons than any other species. Look at how many retic morphs exist relative to the small number of WC/CB animals. Even western diamondbacks, which are kept by maybe 100 people in this country, have 7-8 recessive morphs now.

I'd also ask the opposite question about crocodilians. We've captured and farmed literally millions of alligators and uncovered a grand total of 1 mutation. Nature's perfect predator, I guess.

at least 7

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

how many possible combos are there?

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So why are most BP breeders seemingly satisfied with repeating existing combinations?

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Originally Posted by Ernie Mccracken

So why are most BP breeders seemingly satisfied with repeating existing combinations?

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Some are so nice it's kinda hard to improve on them, classics, if you will.

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Originally Posted by Ernie Mccracken

So why are most BP breeders seemingly satisfied with repeating existing combinations?

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Perhaps they are treating them like I phones?

Sent from my N9560 using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by tttaylorrr

at least 7

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Good answer! 😂