Low white or Ringer?

Yes, although we have hatched easily 150 Pieds since starting out, I remember this one! I was really bummed he wasn't a girl. I would have gladly held it back just to explore its genetics and see if it ever produced a het when bred to a visual Pied. But by 2010 we had several visual combo males coming up to size and it did not make any sense to raise up this male for "dinking" around.

Paul

I am very glad the original breeder remembered this snake and told the OP his/her opinion of it. I trust their judgement in this matter. That being said, I would have no trouble buying this as a low white pied, because that's what it looks like.

My own low white pied male has two small "paradox" normal spots as well, you have to look, but they are there. He produced visual pieds when bred to het pied females, so I have no doubt my boy is a low white pied. He also has the little hourglass shaped marking near his tail that is common to "ringers". I've seen many ringers, both in photos and in person, and the way I always go by is the pattern. Any amount of white anywhere on the snake but the rest of it has a typical ball python pattern, that to me says ringer. Any amount of white anywhere on the snake, and most of the rest of the body has a really crazy, shattered and splotched pattern, I say that makes it a low white pied.

Then you get a snake like Dave Green's extreme ringer Champagne. And that one snake breaks all the rules. Insane amounts of white, no patterning to speak of, everything in your brain screams pied. But I trust Dave to know what his snake is, and he says there is no pied in it. So how do you classify that one? Or her offspring? If someone bought one of her offspring, and then sold it later as a champagne pied, how would you know if it was or not? So I can see why the breeder hesitated to call it a pied for sure. Most likely it is a low white pied. The breeder probably believes it to be a low white pied. But, with their reputation on the line, if the snake was sold as a pied and then never produced a pied, what would that mean for the breeder? It is better to err on the side of caution, than to have a glaring mistake come back to bite you.

OP, if I were in your position, I would go forward with this animal as a pied. I would breed it to one or more KNOWN het pieds, or even better a visual pied, and judge the babies accordingly. But even that is not without flaws, at least in the case of het pieds. Because statistically speaking, you could breed him as a visual pied to several het pieds and not get a single visual. It isn't likely, but it could very well happen. I've seen it before. Whereas if you took him to a visual, there could be no doubt. Because every baby should be pied. If they are not, then you know he isn't what you thought he was. And if by some freak chance some are and some are not, then you are right back where you started. :P

Gale

My plan was to either sell him or trade him for a female Sunglow boa because I breed Boas and not BPs.I guess now I have to breed BPs as well lol.If I do sell or trade him then I will show this thread to whoever is interested in him.

I, too, say low white pied. What does the belly look like?

What piedpeddler is describing is what geneticists commonly call a chimera. Here is a writeup for those who are interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29

The problem with Chimeras is that you don't know which population of cells the sex cells are derived from so there is no way to determine how it will reproduce.

Very interesting.

Chimeras don't show up in the wild though, do they???

We made some at UC Davis, and it required surrogate parents and embryonic implantation, etc.

They can show up anywhere. Even in humans. It's basically just two or more distinct embryos fused together to create one organism.

This isn't something you could breed for though??

That looks low white to me, ringers tend to change the pattern near the ringer part and the white normally doesn't stop abruptly like that, normally fades into the color a bit. There are exceptions though, hence my overuse of the word normally, but looks low white to me.

Here is the underside for those that wanted to see it.
https://scontent-a-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/...10846455_n.jpg