Leopards

Why are they so expensive? I fell in love after seeing the leopard pinstripe and went looking on fauna to check out prices and see what was out there. I was shocked to see them regularly over 1300 for males, females (what I want) obviously more. Is this a relatively new morph? I was expecting 300-600 since it's a dominant morph.

Leopards are in high demand right now, plus not to much has really been done with them until recently.

Leopards are awesome! The pattern change they bring to the table is sweet :gj:.

As already stated there is a pretty high demand for them right now and they haven't been around for too long.
Plus as Hooblah stated the way they just blow up patterns really brings a ton to the table!

Here is our Cinny Leopard that we got from Ozzy earlier this year!
We have thrown him in a few times with our Lesser but haven't seen anything out of him yet this year.
But we have big plans for him this coming season!
http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/...psd9950f21.jpg

Here's a great video Ralph Davis put out. Leopard makes some amazing stuff and its super form is a pied so what's not to like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1vX1A4ZZ9U

Aren't leopards all het pied? That may be why their price is still higher.

Imo leopards are just high quality het pieds lol

Leopard are in the $800 / $1000 range, which is hardly what I would call expensive.

There are still much to do with them and unlike pinstripe they have not been around as long.

I haven't seen any on fauna for less than a 1,000. I wouldn't mind 800 or 900 at all for one I like. :)

Thanks for the explanation guys! I was wondering it it was still relatively new, or if it had been around and new combos came out giving it a craze, or what.

Mike- I thought with leopards they are an "acts like super" with pied? Like with lesser and mojave? Still trying to wrap my mind around all the BP genes and understand how they interact so just asking for clarification.

Leopards are all het Pied, making them incomplete dominant....I guess.lol. I've seen them for $800-1200. I'm looking forward to seeing what ours can do next season. We have a ton of Pieds and Pied combos we could test.

If they are all het pied , does leopard to leopard create pieds. Or do they have to be bred to a homozygous pied to produce more pieds ?

This is our little leopard man :) http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/08/01/regehusa.jpg

He will be paired to our het pied, lemon blast, spider, pastel, and pastel lesser :P and a couple of others

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Originally Posted by vankmen.

If they are all het pied , does leopard to leopard create pieds. Or do they have to be bred to a homozygous pied to produce more pieds ?

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Leopard x Leopard will produce Super Leopards which are Pied.
And Leopard x Pied will produce Leopard Pieds.

Leopard is basically an advanced version of pied.

Pied is incomplete dominant or recessive, some people say they see het pied markers consistently in 100% het pieds, other people say that often it cannot be seen. So, if we say people cannot tell het pieds from normals, its recessive.

Leopard is incomplete dominant, one copy of the gene will show quite clearly. And the homozygous form is a pied.

Both genes are fully compatible and sit on the same locus. That gives us 3 ways to produce a visual pied BP:
- Super leopard
- Leopard + Het pied combo
- Piebald / "super het pied"

All of these look similar, well, they look like a piebald. And any ball python can only in total have two copies of either of the genes, 2x leopard or 1x leopard + 1x het pied or 2x het pied. Just like it is with the BEL complex or the ivory/puma/highway complex.


It should be obvious why the prices are so high, many people working with piebalds would like to upgrade to leopard. A pied male makes pieds and 100% het pieds. A leopard pied makes either pieds (when bred to a pied) or will make 50% leopards 50% het pieds (when bred to a normal or anything else). A super leopard makes either pieds (when bred to a pied, or leopard pied, or super leopard), or all offspring will get the leopard gene (when bred to anything else).


The gene quite frankly appears to be in all regards superior to pied / het pied. The only thing to check would be possible genetic problems with the super leopard, but so far nothing came up.

Anyway, world of ball pythons is wrong to label it dominant, it is either incomplete dominant (called codominant by us) with a totally lethal super form (highly unlikely because people appear to have nice super leopard animals that look like piebalds), or its incomplete dominant (called codominant by us) with a super-form looking just like a piebald. World of ball pythons has known problems when it comes to gene complexes. For example, they list the toffino as "Recessive: Albino, Recessive: Toffee" while it is not a double recessive, you get the visual form of the toffino whenever you get a "het toffee het albino". And more than 2 copies of genes of Albino/Toffee/Candy is impossible, while WOBP suggests the Toffino has 2 copies of the albino gene and 2 copies of the toffee gene.

So dont trust WOBP on this one. Gene complexes are the weak spot of WOBP. To make sure the one thing where i am only 95% certain, research the optics and health of super leopards.

I just hatched out a nice little leopard girl :)

Wow, just saw a leopard mohave combo on Fauna, those are sweet! Time to throw some more cash into the snake savings account.

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Originally Posted by Marrissa

Why are they so expensive? I fell in love after seeing the leopard pinstripe and went looking on fauna to check out prices and see what was out there. I was shocked to see them regularly over 1300 for males, females (what I want) obviously more. Is this a relatively new morph? I was expecting 300-600 since it's a dominant morph.

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Apparently all you need to do is wait a few days for prices to drop. There's a 2013 male being offered by Bill Galloway at Loxahatchee Herp Hatchery for $700 which includes free shipping and a $200 credit with Loxahatchee Rodents. I'd be seriously thinking about picking him up if I needed a male right now. :)

prices on the single-gene leopard can come down quite quickly since its a codom.

but prices for super leopard, and the leopard + het pied combo, will always and forever stay above the prices for regular piebald.

given the popularity of piebald and that its basically a new and improved version of piebald, i say this gene has a lot of future potential, even if the prices for single-gene leopards come down.

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Originally Posted by Mrl249

This is our little leopard man :) http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/08/01/regehusa.jpg

He will be paired to our het pied, lemon blast, spider, pastel, and pastel lesser :P and a couple of others

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You, sir, have made me jealous!!! Very nice!

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Originally Posted by cory9oh4

You, sir, have made me jealous!!! Very nice!

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Why, thank you🍻