Do morphs keep color

I just wanted to know which morphs tend to fade or darken as they get older and also is there a way to tell if an individual snake will stay bright or not?

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Originally Posted by Gerardo

I just wanted to know which morphs tend to fade or darken as they get older and also is there a way to tell if an individual snake will stay bright or not?

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A lot of pastels and pastel crosses will darken and brown with age. Things like fire will get brighter with age. Add fire to anything you want to stay bright :)

A lot of it comes down to quality of the snake. 2 pastels from 2 different lines can and usually do look different as they age. Snakes do tend to get darker as they age, even normals. Some just more than others...

I guess the rule of thumb for pastels is: YELLOW. Orange will turn brown, and browns will just make more brown. The brighter the yellow as a baby, the brighter the adult will be.

But if you really want a bright adult, yeah, add fire or vanilla. Or buy a super.

This is my adult female pastel (with her low-white pied boyfriend). She was THE prettiest single-gene pastel for sale at the Anaheim show in 2009, and I'm pretty happy how she's turned out:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-I...0/IMG_4780.JPG


But she was a complete knock-out as a baby:


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-T...nda_party1.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-M...0/IMG_2063.JPG

X3 to what everyone's said. For example, when you cross a pastel "which will brown out" to a fire "gets better with age" you can produce a Firefly which is high yellow and will remain bright it's whole life. Here's my new firefly pickup:http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/01/13/synyda3y.jpg

I think Pastel is the most overused and overrated gene of all (aside from Pied, but they're in a class of useless all their own). In most cases, Pastel turns everything brown. Or if it doesn't, it makes every combo look the same as it matures. An adult Firefly looks no different than an adult POG. I've mostly purged my collection of Pastel, it only looks good in my female Bullet by making the dark coloration richer and sharper. Everybody uses Pastel to brighten, which is great when they're fresh out of the egg, but after a year it has the exact opposite effect and makes everything look like mud.

Fire and Vanilla definitely are the best brighteners.
I've always appreciated Cinnies for holding their looks and staying impressive as they age. Bright and yellow looks great when they're young but the earth tones stay true forever.

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Originally Posted by RyanT

I think Pastel is the most overused and overrated gene of all (aside from Pied, but they're in a class of useless all their own). In most cases, Pastel turns everything brown. Or if it doesn't, it makes every combo look the same as it matures. An adult Firefly looks no different than an adult POG. I've mostly purged my collection of Pastel, it only looks good in my female Bullet by making the dark coloration richer and sharper. Everybody uses Pastel to brighten, which is great when they're fresh out of the egg, but after a year it has the exact opposite effect and makes everything look like mud.

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I'll have to disagree with you once again. On both your pied comment and the pastel comments. High quality pastels are highly UNDER rated.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9...IMG_6977-1.jpg



Sent from my Samsung Note II using Tapatalk 2

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Originally Posted by rabernet

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9...IMG_6977-1.jpg

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Hot!!

I have a spider thats 140 grams and i really like the color in him. I was wondering if spiders keep the bright yellow

I agree with Robin on pastels too, a good one is difficult to find and can make some amazing combos when you do have a good line.

It's all about the quality in every morph you breed :gj:

As a rule, ball pythons don't maintain the same coloration, particularly the same depth of coloration, in adulthood when compared to hatchlings. Some individuals brighten but often lose depth of color. Some gain melanin (pretty darn common). Some change color completely.

Very few colors and tones stay the same, but some more than others. The albino's yellows and white are pretty darn close to identical at hatching and in adulthood. Bananas/Coral Glows have intense coloration as adults, but gain a little bit of peppered black scales. Various super Blue-eyed-leucistic-complex animals seem to maintain the same coloration into adulthood (white snakes stay beautifully white, purple/grey stays purple/grey, super special's mild yellow hues stick around). Black eyed leucisticis similarly have little change as they age, though I have seen the yellow blotches they are prone to having both fade in some and darken in others, but not terribly significantly. The whites on piebalds seems to stay very clean, but the patterned sections are prone to change.

Various forms of hypomelanism can go against the typical "darkening with age". Plenty of hypos, fires (which really seems to be a form of hypomelanism), and similar morphs "brighten". This typically manifests as a washing-out of color, where bright yellows turn more eggshell white, mild browns turn into light browns, blacks turn into dark greys. There still is a color change, but adults are surely not "more brown" than hatchlings.

Enchis are weird because the best individuals seem more "golden" as adults.

As a rule though, you can expect less intense yellows, and a bit more melanin with most ball pythons.

If you want to understand color in animals a bit more, do some reading on wikipedia about melanin, chromatophores, and biological pigments.

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Originally Posted by RyanT

An adult Firefly looks no different than an adult POG.

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:confusd::confusd: To whos eye :confusd::confusd:

Recently I have seen a lot (and I mean a lot) of poor looking pastels. Mainly because that is almost always the next step up from a normal and very inexpensive. People who start out don't really know what to look for and end up with a bunch of crappy $50 pastels. Then the pastels are bred with other lower quality morphs... and you can see where I am going. Those not-so-great pastel genes are getting passed around, creating not-so-great bees. I rarely see a pastel or bee that catches my eye.

That being said, it doesn't mean all pastels and all pastel combos are bad. You just have to find the right pastel. I'm currently focusing on Citrus pastels. I have 3 animals with the citrus gene and they are all spectacular examples of the morph (if I do say so myself). They are still young so I'm not too sure how they will really turn out, but I am confident they will hold their extreme yellow color.

This also goes for VPI vs. SK axanthic in my opinion. Most adult axanthics I have seen look like normal ball pythons. They brown out so badly they are very hard to distinguish. From what I have witnessed, the VPI axanthics seem to hold their silvery color much better.

edit: 7,000th post! lol

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Originally Posted by rabernet

I'll have to disagree with you once again. On both your pied comment and the pastel comments. High quality pastels are highly UNDER rated.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9...IMG_6977-1.jpg



Sent from my Samsung Note II using Tapatalk 2

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Wow! Do you have a picture of that as a hatchling?

Kinda cool it happen on this thread.

I get what Ryan is saying about pieds. I don't agree with him: I got into this business BECAUSE of pieds. My whole world revolves around them, and I know exactly what I want to combine with what to make the prettiest, brightest, craziest pieds. I personally think spiders are useless, because you can't combine them with pieds and get anything interesting...

But if I had started out as a spider fan instead, than yeah. For a spider person, pieds are useless, because all they make are white snakes. And you had to do a bunch of breedings to get those, because pieds are recessive.

But I think he's just plain wrong about pastels. Yeah, pastels needs a clean-up gene. But all those spectacularly bright 3+ gene snakes you see at the shows these days, most of them have pastel in them. If you want yellow, and you don't want an albino, then you have to stick some pastel in there at some point. And it's a co-dominant trait, and practically free. That's REALLY useful.

I guess I'm just an odd ball, but I actually like the look of a big ole browned out pastel.

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

Various forms of hypomelanism can go against the typical "darkening with age". Plenty of hypos, fires (which really seems to be a form of hypomelanism), and similar morphs "brighten". This typically manifests as a washing-out of color, where bright yellows turn more eggshell white, mild browns turn into light browns, blacks turn into dark greys. There still is a color change, but adults are surely not "more brown" than hatchlings.

Enchis are weird because the best individuals seem more "golden" as adults.

As a rule though, you can expect less intense yellows, and a bit more melanin with most ball pythons.

If you want to understand color in animals a bit more, do some reading on wikipedia about melanin, chromatophores, and biological pigments.

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I definitely agree that hypos (and their combos) brighten and get better with age. Here's my hypo enchi at around 60 grams (breeder photo, credit to Steve Winkler) and at over 500 grams.

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...02328372_n.jpg
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...39224077_n.jpg

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Originally Posted by Beto510

Wow! Do you have a picture of that as a hatchling?

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Why yes I do! ;)

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9..._3287742_n.jpg

You can't make hot pastel combo's without a hot pastel, Blonde pastel in this instance ...

http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/PICT9351.jpg
http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/PICT9355.jpg

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Why yes I do! ;)

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9..._3287742_n.jpg

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Originally Posted by snakesRkewl

You can't make hot pastel combo's without a hot pastel, Blonde pastel in this instance ...

http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/PICT9351.jpg
http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/PICT9355.jpg

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I'd like one of each please! They're both fantastic! :gj:

I definitely think that having awesome pastels in the collection never hurts. Here are my animals that will be the foundation of my pastel combos. I like how they have turned out with size. :)

First up is my 2010 Pastel het Hypo female. She's around 1700 grams in this photo.
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...37077628_n.jpg

Here's my 2011 Pastel Lesser female. She's somewhere in the 700 gram range in this photo if I remember correctly.
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...58844992_n.jpg

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Why yes I do! ;)

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9..._3287742_n.jpg

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WOAH! Almost looks like some fireflies I've seen! She looks awesome!