i have a predisposition to never want any spiders or morphs

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Originally Posted by kxr

I'm sorry but seven thirty is right. I'm no geneticist but I do (pretty much) have a bsc in biology and I've taken my fair share of genetics courses. No if and no buts about it genetically the super spider has to exist. It must be possible that in some instances two alleles reside on the spider locus. This therefore means that either

A. In twenty years of breeding there has been no super spiders produced due to astronomically bad luck (highly unlikely)

B. Super spiders appear to be the same as spiders visually thus making spider a dominant trait and by chance no one has ever bred one of these animals or at least it has never been documented (this is possible but still highly unlikely)

C. Super spiders are lethal, it is possible that they fail very early on and the female simply reabsorbs the embryo, if that is the case you would never get to see these failed super spiders or high slug ratios, I suspect the clutch sizes would in general be smaller but I'm not sure if that's the case

Also I'm not sure who told you cinnamon was a combination of genes. I imagine you inferred this based on what it does in the animal but this is simply incorrect. It IS a single gene, the visual phenotypic expression of the gene is a result of the effect that gene has on the transcription of RNA, essentially proteins within the animal. These proteins CAN have multiple functions within the animal and that is POSSIBLY why you may see both a pattern and colour difference but this does not have to be the case.

Genes do not work in this manner, it is not as simple as saying gene A codes for pattern X and gene B codes for colour Y it is entirely possible that gene C codes for pattern X and colour Y.

Let me know if anything I said was confusing, I'll try to clarify


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Perfectly said from all I've learned just said in way better terms lol almost textbook material right there :)


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Now this brings me to the question...how are our base morphs created?... like where did the pastel come from? Etc? I get some are natural occurances in the wild but what about the others?


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Originally Posted by BBotteron

Now this brings me to the question...how are our base morphs created?... like where did the pastel come from? Etc? I get some are natural occurances in the wild but what about the others?

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They are either found in the wild or they pop up randomly in people's collections. They are not "created" by people - they are discovered and then proven.

The Pastel story (from Kevin McCurley's book, The Complete Ball Python: A Comprehensive Guide to Care, Breeding, and Genetic Mutations):

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The original Pastel was an imported male that I bred to a normal female, and hatched normal-appearing babies as a result. At the time, ball python breeders had little experience with co-dominant traits and it was assumed that these normal offspring were heterozygous for a simple-recessive gene. I raised the offspring and bred a female back to the adult male, subsequently hatching out three visible Pastel Jungles. During that time, another breeder (Greg Graziani) also hatched out Pastels to confirm that it was in fact a first generation morph.

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Ok so how do these different morphs "pop up randomly"? Do they all come from the wild or is it just some random unexplained base morph that pops out of an egg bc of some random genetic mutation?...


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Sorry for all the questions and curiosity. The genetics of bps have really spiked my interest recently there's just so much info and mystery surrounding everything. It's just fascinating


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Originally Posted by kxr

I'm sorry but seven thirty is right. I'm no geneticist but I do (pretty much) have a bsc in biology and I've taken my fair share of genetics courses. No if and no buts about it genetically the super spider has to exist. It must be possible that in some instances two alleles reside on the spider locus. This therefore means that either

A. In twenty years of breeding there has been no super spiders produced due to astronomically bad luck (highly unlikely)

B. Super spiders appear to be the same as spiders visually thus making spider a dominant trait and by chance no one has ever bred one of these animals or at least it has never been documented (this is possible but still highly unlikely)

C. Super spiders are lethal, it is possible that they fail very early on and the female simply reabsorbs the embryo, if that is the case you would never get to see these failed super spiders or high slug ratios, I suspect the clutch sizes would in general be smaller but I'm not sure if that's the case

Also I'm not sure who told you cinnamon was a combination of genes. I imagine you inferred this based on what it does in the animal but this is simply incorrect. It IS a single gene, the visual phenotypic expression of the gene is a result of the effect that gene has on the transcription of RNA, essentially proteins within the animal. These proteins CAN have multiple functions within the animal and that is POSSIBLY why you may see both a pattern and colour difference but this does not have to be the case.

Genes do not work in this manner, it is not as simple as saying gene A codes for pattern X and gene B codes for colour Y it is entirely possible that gene C codes for pattern X and colour Y.

Let me know if anything I said was confusing, I'll try to clarify


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I would suggest you take more classes. You, again are using an oversimplification of genetics. A "super spider" does not have to exist. You are assuming that genes can only exist in pairs which is simply not true. The spider gene when combined could have a deleterious effect leaving only a single copy of the gene. The animal would pass on its genes as a homozygote but would not be one. Genes, while usually found in pairs, can also exist as singles and even triples. I am not even saying that the spider gene is not lethal just that I am not sure it has been proven to be. The term lethal gene is a bit ambiguous in itself because at what point of development do they die? There seems to be a lot of different information on this. Sure we can speculate, but we have to realize it is nothing more than speculation.

The human genome consists of around 20000 genes, as a benchmark, and you think it is possible that there is a single gene that codes for color pattern and what ever other unseen affect the cinnamon phenotype presents? Even my example of a gene coding for pattern or color is an oversimplification, just more correct than a single gene responsible for the phenotype of a morph. Now these genes may be passed on together no the same chromosome, but they are not the same gene.

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Originally Posted by BBotteron

Ok so how do these different morphs "pop up randomly"? Do they all come from the wild or is it just some random unexplained base morph that pops out of an egg bc of some random genetic mutation?..

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Everything "comes from the wild". It just takes the exact right combination of animals sometimes for some genes to show up. Whether this happens while they're still "in the wild" or in someone's collection is irrelevant.

You're getting into "What is a genetic trait?" territory here. Ball python morphs are not special snowflakes (as much as we'd like to think that they are), so maybe some research into the basics of genetics would help. :gj:

I've been doing a lot of reading about genetic traits just the more I read the more questions pop up and you answered one I've been wondering for awhile lol "everything "comes from the wild"" thank you :)

In others words my underlying question that I beat around the bush at was "there's not some secret science lab somewhere creating these morphs and doing tests on a bunch of snakes are there?" Questions answered and I feel a lot better knowing the answer haha got me a little nervous for a minute.


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Originally Posted by BBotteron

In others words my underlying question that I beat around the bush at was "there's not some secret science lab somewhere creating these morphs and doing tests on a bunch of snakes are there?" Questions answered and I feel a lot better knowing the answer haha got me a little nervous for a minute.

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Ha! No. No one's playing mad scientist with these guys. Ain't nobody's got the time or money for that - the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. We're talking about pretty snakes here, not curing cancer.

In short, breeders are more like bartenders than zymurgists (how's that for a word of the day).

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Originally Posted by AntTheDestroyer

I would suggest you take more classes. You, again are using an oversimplification of genetics. A "super spider" does not have to exist. You are assuming that genes can only exist in pairs which is simply not true. The spider gene when combined could have a deleterious effect leaving only a single copy of the gene. The animal would pass on its genes as a homozygote but would not be one. Genes, while usually found in pairs, can also exist as singles and even triples. I am not even saying that the spider gene is not lethal just that I am not sure it has been proven to be. The term lethal gene is a bit ambiguous in itself because at what point of development do they die? There seems to be a lot of different information on this. Sure we can speculate, but we have to realize it is nothing more than speculation.

The human genome consists of around 20000 genes, as a benchmark, and you think it is possible that there is a single gene that codes for color pattern and what ever other unseen affect the cinnamon phenotype presents? Even my example of a gene coding for pattern or color is an oversimplification, just more correct than a single gene responsible for the phenotype of a morph. Now these genes may be passed on together no the same chromosome, but they are not the same gene.

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I'd be very interested to learn your background. I apologize for my inflammatory comment if my information was incorrect in any way, as I said I'm no geneticist that is simply my understanding.

I'll give you the fact that these alleles can exist in singular copies due to deleterious effects however I'm not sure I'd be willing to give you the rest of that. I'm not aware of any instances in which alleles exist in triplicate. Due to the structure of DNA it does not make sense to me how this would work. Can you cite your example? I'm genuinely interested in how that might work.

It seems odd that the inhertence patterns would be as such if the mutation was due to an alteration of multiple genes. What you're suggesting is that due to the close proximity of these genes on the chromosome they are always or almost always passed on together right? I suppose this is possible, if this is the case I'd be interested to see what would happen if recombinace occurred and one of these genes were lost. Would we then be able to isolate specific traits of the "genes" in ball pythons? I'm rather interested to hear what you think is going on here however this is really far away from the intended discussion. If I didn't offend you and you care to explain I'd love to hear a pm about it.