How to identify the Fire gene in combos?

Looks like an older lesser or butter. When they are young they have very rich colors, and as they get older those colors fade more and more, leading to something that looks like this at a certain point. Which will continue to fade more.

But that's just my two cents as someone who has worked with lessers and fires.

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Originally Posted by Oxylepy

Looks like an older lesser or butter. When they are young they have very rich colors, and as they get older those colors fade more and more, leading to something that looks like this at a certain point. Which will continue to fade more.

But that's just my two cents as someone who has worked with lessers and fires.

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Snake is 200 grams.

I was pretty interested in this because I have a pastel lesser and a butter fire enchi and was really just wanting to learn a little more about the differences in these morphs so I looked up as many pictures of the combos as I could find. Yours looks absolutely nothing like my butter fire enchi, obviously the enchi adds a much different pattern but I wasn't sure how much it changed the color. From what I found, even though mine has enchi in it, the colors are way too far off for me to think yours is even possibly butter fire. From the pictures I found of butter fire, the colors are much closer to mine, yours just doesn't match so I think Fire is out. Then I went back to my original thought that yours does remind me of my lesser pastel but after looking at many pictures and mine, the one thing that stands out as not matching is the darkness in yours head. All the combos with pastel have a noticeable fading of the head color, so I think it's safe to say that's out too. This leads me to yours just being a nice bright lesser or butter. Out of many pictures of lesser/butter, yours does look brighter than a lot but there were quite a few that did look just like yours. I think the only way to prove otherwise would be to prove it through breeding. It's really not important if your not specifically breeding to produce something with fire. I would just be happy to have a nice example of the lesser/butter morph and enjoy it. :)

Thank you! Without any head stamps, I think she is just a very light lesser or butter. She is so light that the breeder thought she is a lesser fire. Anyway, I am going to buy a boy for her. What butter combos do you guys like the most? I may buy a enchi bumblebee to work on The White Walker.

I am not seeing fire, but like Pit said, I see more than just a Butter. The "eyes" of the "alien heads" are changed from a normal Butter. It looks like a granite influence more than anything to me. In my experience, Fire doesn't bring in a broken, granite like pattern. You would have to know what the parents were to have a better chance of guessing what your snake is.

My 200g lesser pastel still looks like a baby. My 350g lesser pastel looks like her father. My 150g lesser looks like a baby still.

So I'd say at 200g, it should still look like it did after its first few sheds. As such, this snake is likely another color morph on top of the basic lesser or butter. Notably a color morph which doesn't enhance fading. Check butter or lesser morphs on the morphlist. Look at baby bp pics, as adult pictures of those morphs will be extremely misleading

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...326_163228.jpg

This is a closer look. The pattern is really messy IMO and it seems that there are no "eyes' in those "alien heads".

What I meant is that most Blue Eye Leucistic complex genes either have no "eyes" in the alien heads, or one large "eye". Your's has flecks or speckling that are more typical of a "granite" pattern. I don't think I have seen a Lesser or Butter do that without another gene. The best example I can give would be how adding Yellowbelly to Mojave changes the large, single "eye" into speckles. You can see in this picture how the Mojave (lower right) has large single "eyes", but how the Orangebelly Mojave has the "granite" pattern where the "eye" should be. Your snake looks like it has more than just Butter or Lesser because where the single, large "eye", or nothing, should be, there are speckles.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...14-08-16_4.jpg

Just did some research on the yellow belly stuff. I found that the lesser yellowbelly looks quite alike to my girl.
https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil.../lesser_yb.jpg
This is the lesser yellowbelly with the sparkles you mentioned on the alien heads.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...331_193743.jpghttps://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...331_193812.jpg
These are the belly shot of my girl. Do you guys think she has yellowbelly? Without the head stamp, I still think she is just a light butter. Also, the pet shop could not trace the parents of my snake.

Yellow belly is a hard one for me to point out in combo morphs but I don't see any reason to just start looking for other morphs in her. The speckles in the alien heads are not as common as eyes or blank but you can find lessors listed on morph market that look almost identical to yours, speckles and all. Your not going to be able to just say it's some combo of morphs, it just isn't obvious enough. Stick with whats known, lesser or butter, until you prove her to be something other than that through breeding. Just one more reason not to get your ball python from a petstore. If you had plans of breeding, why in the world would you get your breeders from a place like that?