Is it important to know your animals genetics

Everything on http://www.worldofballpythons.com/morphs/ has been proven and has an image to go with it for the most part. There's not a snake on there that I have found that isn't real. There's a lot of snakes on there that have many different morphs bred into them so you'll have some snakes named something completely irrelevant to what is actually in it. Once you get to snakes that have multiple morphs in then it can be a challenge to know exactly but there's nothing google won't and world of balls won't tell you.

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/forum...cessive-Morphs
http://ball-pythons.net/forums/forum...ominant-Morphs
http://ball-pythons.net/forums/forum...esigner-Morphs
http://ball-pythons.net/forums/forum...hon-Morphology

This is a good place to start to learn all of the base morphs.

Go to http://www.worldofballpythons.com/morphs/ and click the button by "Basic" in the filters to the left of the morph list. That cuts the list to 249 entries, though IMO some are duplicates. Like the three albino entries.

When you see all those different "pastels" those are genetic combos that have pastel plus other genes. There are different lines of different genetic traits but they are still genetic.

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Originally Posted by EasiGregory

So that leads me to my initial concern. You mentioned pastel, to which I went to http://www.worldofballpythons.com/morphs/ and looked up pastel. It return almost 1300 different variations of the pastel morph, yes combined with different things, but are all of those truly genetic morphs? Or are they just some variation that someone out in the world of pythons decided to give a new name.

"Oh this guy has a shade different then the last...Ill go out and call this a new morph of the pastel gene."

Is there no version control to a combination of genes being thrown together that then make a "morph"? There seems to be so many things being crammed together I can not seem to just find a simple clean pastel. Maybe I am going about this all wrong, or maybe I am misunderstanding something.

-Greg

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The base gene Pastel is an actual genetic morph. Nothing makes a Pastel other than a Pastel. Now with that being said, in addition to basic Pastel's, some breeders have decided to rename their line bred Pastel's something else. For example, Citrus Pastel. Citrus Pastels aren't anything except a Pastel, they do the same in combos, have the same supers, etc... They are the same morph except the breeder of them feels his line of Pastels stands out from the rest for whatever reason. To me a high quality Pastel is just that. A high quality Pastel, idc what "line" it is. I pay for quality not who is line breeding it. I think renaming already established morphs or having your own "line" is ridiculous. For example, Banana's and Coral Glows are the SAME EXACT THING. No one can prove otherwise. But what happened? Breeder A imported the first version and named it Banana. Then breeder B imported the same exact snake at a later date and decided to name it Coral Glow. It's really a marketing ploy to make more money off already introduced morphs. There are several morphs like this. But even then, if you eliminated all duplicate-renamed morphs, there are still thousands of combos that can be made with base genes. The possibilities are limitless.

I knew I was not alone in thinking the way I did. I appreciate your comments TheSnakeEye and the others as well for all of your helpful tips and comments.

IMO there should be some way of tracking a morph and its alias names as well. As a newer person to the scene I would not know that sort of information without seeking it out (which is good to do in all cases regardless).

After I thought I had a grasp on thing with leopard geckos my world gets turned upside down with ball pythons :) Looks like its back to reading/studying genetics/morph combos again. So much to learn (a bit daunting).

-Greg

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Originally Posted by EasiGregory

I knew I was not alone in thinking the way I did. I appreciate your comments TheSnakeEye and the others as well for all of your helpful tips and comments.

IMO there should be some way of tracking a morph and its alias names as well. As a newer person to the scene I would not know that sort of information without seeking it out (which is good to do in all cases regardless).

After I thought I had a grasp on thing with leopard geckos my world gets turned upside down with ball pythons :) Looks like its back to reading/studying genetics/morph combos again. So much to learn (a bit daunting).

-Greg

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EDIT: I am an idiot and just realized that there are multiple pages on each of the dom/co-com/het pages on this site :P My confusion has just been lessened significantly (do not judge me kind people of BP forums).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EasiGregory

EDIT: I am an idiot and just realized that there are multiple pages on each of the dom/co-com/het pages on this site [emoji14] My confusion has just been lessened significantly (do not judge me kind people of BP forums).

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I didn't pay attention to bp's for years and it's crazy how fast they've progressed. I got a normal back in the late 80s as a kid when there wasn't much else but albinos. It's a lot to take in. I think we will continue to see cool new morphs being discovered. If morphs such as pieds, clowns, albinos, bananas, sunsets, scaleless heads...ect all come from the wild then I don't think it's going to just up and stop.