BP crossed with other species

New question... I know we can't handle a Burmese due it's size. How big do the Burmballs get? Anyone know?

i just want to know how its even done. do ball pythons just voluntarily mate with other species of snake or does there have to be some coaxing involved?
and personally i don't see what wrong with it, unless something crazy happens. i think i remember hearing that when you cross a lion with a tiger somehow it "turns off" the growth inhibitor gene and they get huge. maybe someone will create a true monster snake like in the movies?

The primary problem with it is that the hybrid offspring, UNLIKE mules, are very often not sterile with one or more of the parent species.

This means a burm-ball could be bred back to a ball python, or to a Burmese. When you do that, you will wind up with a snake that is 25% hybrid, but may look like a pure-blooded ball python or burm.

And that's where the danger lies--this animal, which looks like a pure ball python (for example), might potentially be sold, stolen, given, willed...whatever...to someone who does NOT know what it is. That individual may then go on to breed the hybrid again, and sell the offspring (1/8 burmese) as normal ball pythons. You have now introduced, accidently, the DNA of another species into the bloodlines of ball pythons, and no one knows that it's there. And that's giving people the benefit of the doubt. Consider just how much money some of the new color and pattern morphs are selling for, think about how tempting it would be for someone to acquire a hybrid, cross it back to a ball python deliberately, keep the offspring showing aberrant patterns or colors from their non-ball-python parent, and market their offspring as a brand new ball python morph.
Who's going to find out about what they've done? And how?

The flipside of this argument is that these animals are NEVER, ever going to be released into the wild in their native environment, and their genes will never go back into those wild populations. They are, and will ALWAYS be, purely pet snakes kept by interested people. As such, if we crossbreed them with all sorts of different species, and turn them into absolute weirdo mongrel snakes, it doesn't really matter--we're essentially developing domesticated herptiles, not preserving a wild animal species. It is very difficult to argue with this--certainly, albino spider ball pythons are not in any way a preservation of traits of the ball python species. They would be unlikely to survive in the wild at all, even if by chance one occurred there. We have created them because we intend to continue keeping them as pet animals. Therefore, anything that makes our pets more appealing should be just fine, as long as they are healthy...right?

That having been said, hybridization just doesn't sit right with me. I couldn't explain why I devalue hybrid animals, but I personally don't care for them, and wouldn't own one (let alone create one). Perhaps it's for the same reason some people who eat organic food refuse to eat anything genetically engineered, no matter what's been done to it. It's not always logical, but there it is.

On the confustion over species and subspecies:
Humans have no other subspecies (we are Homo sapiens sapiens) --therefore, racial differences among humans are like linebred color or pattern traits in leopard geckos. (Not recessive, dominant, or co-dominant genetic morphs, but simply line-bred characteristics). Humans suffered a genetic bottleneck back around the time the supervolcano Toba erupted--our species was reduced to only 5000 to 10,000 individuals--we are all descended from them, and in spite of our apparent differences, it simply hasn't been long enough since then for us to differentiate into subspecies. On a complete side-note, the oldest surviving genetic line of humans lies in Africa...their 'race' is parent to all of us. I was somewhat pleased to learn that these ancient people are the San--the African Bushmen made famous in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy". So, we are all the descendents of these incredibly tough, intelligent, enduring, and above all sane, people. Let's hear it for genetics research.

Dogs, ALL domestic dogs, ARE a subspecies. A single subspecies. They are Canis lupus familiaris--and so is the Dingo. The Dingo is a wild 'breed' of domestic dog. A chihuahua and a wolfhound are the same subspecies. Their differences are line-bred characteristics. (In spite of being all of one subspecies, they still have more genetic variation between them than the human 'races' have).
Dogs as a species are wolves. There are a variety of other subspecies of wolves. All are Canis lupus.
To put all of this hybridizing into perspective...
If you crossbreed a king snake (Lampropeltis getula) with a milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) then you have created a hybrid. This hybrid is the equivalent to breeding a wolf or domestic dog (Canis lupus) to a coyote (Canis latrans).
But what folks have been doing with snakes is even more bizarre. They have not only crossed animals of different species...but of different GENUSES.
They have crossbred a king snake (Lampropeltis getula) to a corn snake (Pantherophis guttata). THIS is the equivalent of crossing a human (Homo sapiens) with a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and getting living, viable, and fertile offspring. Don't look so shocked. While most scientists reassure us that such a crossbreeding isn't possible, the reality is that we can't be sure of that, because no one has ever made a real public concerted effort to hybridize us with our closest living relatives. It could happen. The fact that it HAS happened with snakes proves that the old criteria for determining species are obsolete--breeding to produce fertile offspring is no longer a valid way to determine species--OR genus. It never was. Now we must rely on genetics. (Which is why dogs are no longer Canis familiaris --genetic studies have proven them to be Canis lupus after all, and a 'wolf-dog hybrid' is only a subspecies hybrid, not a true species hybrid).

The Burm-ball is an inter-species hybrid--both Burmese and Ball pythons are in the same genus (Genus Python).

The Wall (Woma-ball) is an inter-genus hybrid, as Womas are Aspidites ramsayi, and ball pythons are Python regius.