What's on the horizon

I noticed that no matter what stage in the evolution of a species, there will always be a new holy grail morph that is thousands of dollars. Now that I have been combing the web looking at the different Ball morphs, I'm wondering where this can possibly go in the future and whether the Ball Python is close to morphing out?? So what do all you breeder think, are we close to the end yet? I know there will always be different variations of each morph, but what do you think the possibility of new morphs in the future, and what are you working on at this time?

Gary

I think there's still a ways to go, just because of the sheer number of possibilities in combos. Sure, we'll run out of base morphs eventually. But because of the small clutches, the chance of hitting multiple morph combos gets pretty small. When you're talking about hitting a 1/64 chance out of an 8 egg clutch, that snake is gonna be worth something.

Well I know a university professor that is doing research into genetically engineering the colour of leopard gecko and cornsnake hatchlings at this moment. Facinating stuff... he's hoping to have F1 fluorescent corn snakes geckos. His target start time for this project is May 09 or 10. What he did was offer breeders a pair of viable F1 hatchlings of their colour choice (dependent on his success) in exchange for blizzard/patternless-albino eggs at regular intervals.

Cool, cool stuff.

For now I think the biggest goal is to figure out how to harness multiple morphs to create solid colour snakes in different colours like purple and red. Aside from that I'd assume another big goal is to start controlling and understanding pattern development on balls with more consistency.

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Originally Posted by Drake_Marcus

Well I know a university professor that is doing research into genetically engineering the colour of leopard gecko and cornsnake hatchlings at this moment. Facinating stuff... he's hoping to have F1 fluorescent corn snakes geckos. His target start time for this project is May 09 or 10. What he did was offer breeders a pair of viable F1 hatchlings of their colour choice (dependent on his success) in exchange for blizzard/patternless-albino eggs at regular intervals.

Cool, cool stuff.

For now I think the biggest goal is to figure out how to harness multiple morphs to create solid colour snakes in different colours like purple and red. Aside from that I'd assume another big goal is to start controlling and understanding pattern development on balls with more consistency.

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I really like where your going with this, snakes in solid colors. The white BP with Blues is prime example, simply gorgeous. I can see getting a lime green ball, a yellow ball, or emerald green ball. May be fantasy now, but who knows in 20 years. I also collect palms and tropical trees and in the plant world there is some impressive tissue culture engineering going on which makes the perfect clone. Cloning the perfect Ball morph has some great potential as well.

Gary

With at least 60 base morphs already identified in ball pythons, we'll never see all the combo possibilities in our lifetime.

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With at least 60 base morphs already identified in ball pythons, we'll never see all the combo possibilities in our lifetime.

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Could not agree anymore with that statement, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg with p. regius morphs, look at cornsnakes, they've been doing combos since the late 70's and still popping new stuff every year.

Ball pythons are not as prolific as cornsnakes, the combo potential is mind boggling, Co-doms are the big thing right now BUT wait until the recessive combo are mixed in with all the co-doms, think of the posibilities of having a single snake carrying a multitude of genes and breeding it back to the same opposite sex gene carriers, you could be hatching different combos every year from one pair of snakes.

Nobody here alive today will be able to see all combo potential down the road.

Welcome to the wonderful world of genetics :)

I agree, there's always going to be more combinations out there to be made. Plus there still is the occasional new morph coming in from Africa or being proven out from time to time which will keep things interesting and keep people on their toes :). Ball python genetics has kind of become a fascination of mine, I love learning about the different morphs, combos and looking at the possibilities of what can be made.

I think it's pretty cool with corns, being that almost all morphs are recessive, that they quite often have multiple unknown hets so it's not uncommon to have a freakin rainbow clutch of babies. I don't know if balls will ever really get to that point since there are quite a few more co-doms but I think we'll be seeing more and more co-doms with multiple hets or possible hets down the road as people begin experimenting more and trying for different types of combos.

Just this year we gained a new reccessive morph that blew me away (tri-stripe anyone???)- and the can of worms that morph is about to open ... well, hasn't even opened yet. Just discovering one single new morph means 8527584329078925439058 combos to come with it. This is just the beginning of a tunnel with no end. And I LIKE it!!!!!!! :banana:

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Originally Posted by adizziedoll

Just this year we gained a new reccessive morph that blew me away (tri-stripe anyone???)- and the can of worms that morph is about to open ... well, hasn't even opened yet. Just discovering one single new morph means 8527584329078925439058 combos to come with it. This is just the beginning of a tunnel with no end. And I LIKE it!!!!!!! :banana:

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Yeah - I can't WAIT to see the tri-stripe albino or the tri-stripe axanthic....

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Originally Posted by JenH

Yeah - I can't WAIT to see the tri-stripe albino or the tri-stripe axanthic....

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Send me one of each parent and I'll see what I can do :gj: