white scales on spine

My female has always had a few white scales here and there along her back, which I assumed was part of her coloration, but I've noticed they're turning into a sort of white streak all the way down her spine - I wonder if maybe she's scraping them on her hides (which are made of a rough resin to look kind of like natural rock). She had lighter plastic hides before and used to pick them up and move them by wedging herself inside, I wonder if she's trying to redecorate with the heavy ones. Has anyone seen scale damage like this before? In any case I'm seeing if it gets better or worse after her next shed.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...206_163804.jpg

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...206_163800.jpg

Have you actually looked at these scales up close? I mean really close, with magnification, like a jeweler's loupe? If there's actual damage, then she's been scraping them- otherwise, it might be just a natural occurrence.

I don't actually have a loupe or anything like that, but I've seen them mentioned before as being useful so I guess I'll pick one up.

Magnification comes in handy for so many things- so you can tell what's going on for injuries (yours or your pet's) as well as for many hobbies. Better than guessing anyway, & they're not expensive. Other magnifiers work too, but loupes are handy to carry also- they fold up to a very small size.

I'll see if the craft store has any. It doesn't help that her colors are so complicated lol, anything could be just weird pigment. She had poop on her the other day and I was turning her over and over going "is that poop? Is that? Or is that just a spot? Is this poop?" :confuzd:

Magnification is handy for removing splinters or identifying insects too. Craft store might have them? If not, there's always Walmart, or other online sources.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Magnifyin...Case/728441416

Ok under magnification, the white is around the inside edges of her scales so I assume it's pigment, I figure she'd scrape the center of the scales off first since they're raised. Guess her markings are just weird!

Little update on this girl - after her last shed the stripe became even more prominent and does seem to be just a pigment thing. I asked her breeder but he hadn't seen such a thing before so we're not sure what genes are causing it but it is pretty cool looking. I poked around on morphmarket but didn't see anything similar, those pictures are mostly just babies and this didn't show up until she was around 6-8 months old so I wasn't really expecting much. There is a chance she is het for G-stripe, so in my head I was thinking maybe "het g stripe" => "stripe up the back" but there doesn't seem to be much correlation. Kind of neat anyway.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...327_185427.jpg

Does she have "highway" morph in her? That's what it made me think of, but keep in mind I pay little attention to the genetics- that's a question for some others here & the reason I stay out of genetics/morph discussions. I just looked up G-stripe & that makes total sense to me. BTW, I'm really glad she's not been scraping her back. I vaguely recall it mentioned that some (BPs) can lose color this way (not specifically in a stripe though) as they mature, but no idea what morph(s) that may happen with. Very interesting.

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

Does she have "highway" morph in her? That's what it made me think of, but keep in mind I pay little attention to the genetics- that's a question for some others here & the reason I stay out of genetics/morph discussions. I just looked up G-stripe & that makes total sense to me. BTW, I'm really glad she's not been scraping her back. I vaguely recall it mentioned that some (BPs) can lose color this way (not specifically in a stripe though) as they mature, but no idea what morph(s) that may happen with. Very interesting.

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Yeah highway is the only thing that's really similar, she does have Yellowbelly which is halfway to highway, so maybe something is interacting with the Yellowbelly. It hadn't occurred to me before that the dashes on a highway correspond to the dorsal blotches, just much thinner. It sounds kind of obvious when I say it that way, but if you picture her yellow areas being much darker you can see how a highway pattern would emerge.

And yeah, weird stripe is much better than her hurting her back, I wasn't sure what I was going to do if she was scraping herself. She's a very active girl but is getting much better at sitting quietly with me for awhile - she's curled up in my sweatshirt pocket here.

She’s amazing without a doubt! Congrats.

Updating this thread because her shed test results came back and she is het for Gstripe! So people's suspicions may have been correct that the stripe could be a marker or interacting with a codom to show the het. (Or it could be totally unrelated!)