solitary ball python lays eggs

Does this sound like a headline of a tabloid mag? This is my life. I have a 17 year old ball python in my possession for all of it's life. "He" as I was told he is has laid about 8 eggs today. From what I have learned today the behavior up to today is consistant with a pregnant snake (not eating, getting fat) but he/she has been alone. What gives? Infertile eggs?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by deanhaines

Does this sound like a headline of a tabloid mag? This is my life. I have a 17 year old ball python in my possession for all of it's life. "He" as I was told he is has laid about 8 eggs today. From what I have learned today the behavior up to today is consistant with a pregnant snake (not eating, getting fat) but he/she has been alone. What gives? Infertile eggs?

---

Ummm..ehhh...Immaculate conception?

can you candle them with a flashlight and see if there are veins in the eggs? just curious... and are you a fisherman?


vaughn

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kavmon

can you candle them with a flashlight and see if there are veins in the eggs? just curious...


vaughn

---

How would it even be possible?

Are they big, round, and white or small, grey, and sickly looking?

Not sure I've read of ball pythons commonly laying unfertilized eggs (follicles are usually resorbed if unfertilized) but, yeah, no clue.

Wow i thought this was impossible to happen :confused: .If they are fertile i see lots of breeders contacting you for a multiple sexed ball python lol.

Parthenogenesis is not unheard of in pythons .... although, it is extremely rare.

-adam

Fascinating! I can see the headlines on KS now!

"17 Yr Old BP Lays 8 Eggs, 5.3 Lucy, Virgin Female"

We should start the rumor up! lol

I mean... hey... 17 years ago, there wasn't quite as much knowledge about morphs in general.... Wouldn't it be cool if this female was some sort of aberant that the trappers let go without knowing what it was... and WHAMMO! lol What a story!

Please let us know how this works out for you... I'm extremely interested!

Good luck!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

Parthenogenesis is not unheard of in pythons .... although, it is extremely rare.

-adam

---

And here we thought filling an island with all female pythons would be safe!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SnakeySnakeSnake

And here we thought filling an island with all female pythons would be safe!

---

And it would have been... The problem came when they included Frog DNA along with the Python... :)

do female balls lay eggs when they are that old?

what's the norm?

I did a quick search and can't find anything about parthenogenesis in Balls; however, there was a parhtenogenetic Burmese python at Artis Zoo in Australia in 2003. She produced (fertile) eggs for several years in a row, even though she hadn't been with a male; genetic tests confirmed that the offspring were, in fact, fatherless. The surprising part is that all of the offspring were female -- the expectation was that they would have all been males. [This is because in snakes the female is the heterogametic sex (in humans, males (XY) are heterogametic and females (XX) are homogametic. The eggs double their DNA during parthenogenesis, so it would be expected that the resulting embryos would be homogametic (male); since they weren't, the DNA doubling must have happened in the egg-precursor cells, which is quite unusual. (I realize that explanation wasn't brilliant; if anyone is actually interested, I can explain in more detail.)]

I'm really curious to know if these are fertile eggs or not...please let us know.

Wow, this is wild; if the eggs turn out to be fertile, that would be completely awesome. So how did they candle for you?