Some morphs more aggressive?

cinnys!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My Calico bites me every time i pull him out.. try and prob a snake that just keeps on going. Even had him try and swallow my thumb. Glad hes only 150g rite now.lol hope he will get better

I've definitely seen aggressive genes (not associated with morph) passed down through up to 3 generations. I had two different unusually aggressive ball pythons that produced some unusually aggressive offspring and in one case I've even seen aggression in some grandchildren before purging the line from my collection. Early on ball pythons had a reputation as bad feeders and difficult breeders. At that time, most were imported adults (this was like 25 years ago). I think some breeders selected for ball pythons that were more like the more aggressive species they had already had success breeding so aggressive genes might have been added early on to some morph lines.

I've been trying to work the aggressive animals out of my collection but it's hard when you have other genetics you want to keep. Right now I have a beautiful female hypo pph clown that I'd like to raise up to breed and see if she can produce a hypo clown but I really hate her personality. Lately she seems to be getting a bit better but given that she was still striking up to a year old I think she has an aggressive gene from her mom and tracing back to my original het hypo male. They aren't nearly as bad or consistently nasty as the first two lines I mentioned though but not up to the "nice" snakes I think the species should be.

Although I think I've seen good evidence of aggressive genes that don't change appearance I don't discount the possibility a mutation could have personality effects as well as the color/pattern we initially select them for. I've heard breeders describe spiders as having extra personality and I remember tiger retics were reported to be particularly mellow.

I breed some dark morph combos and have not noticed a bias toward aggression in the ones I work with (chocolate, mojave, cinnamon).

However, one time years ago I gave a corn snake egg to a co-worker so his son could watch it hatch. Apparently their house was a little cooler than we expected because it took a very long time to hatch (don't remember exactly but might have been close to 90 days). I think it was a genetic anerythristic (like axanthic in balls), at least it could have been based on the parents. But it came out very dark and smokey colored all over and the most aggressive corn I had ever seen. In this case I wonder if the cool incubation caused darker color and more aggression. I don't think ball python eggs can stand nearly the range of incubation temperatures corn snakes can so maybe long before you saw any changes in color or temperament from low incubation temps you would just not get hatchlings. But then again you used to see small dark imported ball hatchlings that I don't think ever proved genetic so maybe these were from low incubation temps?

The one and only nippy snake i been around was and atb and from what I've seen heard they always have attitude lol. None of my balls are nippy or hiss

I had a atb that was such a cool snake but was the devil incarnate. Haha Once you opened his cage you had 5-10 seconds before he went from his perch at the top of his cage to the door and was striking at any movement. You could move your hand around outside the cage and he'd track your movement like if you were holding a cheeseburger in front of a dog.
Only strike I've had from a ball was the other day when I was cleaning up some substrate in front of my calicos hide. It was daytime so I didn't even think about it (I only feed at dusk/night and clean or handle my snakes during the day) but she had just shed and was hungry. She missed but it was close.