Someone help me out.......

This has been bothering me for days. I am not very experienced in the whole genetics/breeding area, however i started thinking. In theory, is there a such thing as a "normal" ball python??? Is it possible that EVERY ball python has some dna that makes it het for something (pun not intended). Just because it may not have anything special about it, or come from extraordinary parents, does not mean that it dosent carry the possibility of being a new morph or an existing morph. Just because we havent proved it yet dosent mean it dosent exist. With the way breeding is these days soo many snakes are being combined and new morphs are being proved every year, but what i want to know is if you think that "normal" ball pythons are potential missing links to new morphs, and if a "normal" ball python is just a myth. Some feedback would be great.

I had to vote yes, as in there are normals. Now I am not a genetics wiz by far so I could be totally off here. If every "normal" ball was het for something, then why don't they randomly produce more morphs out of nowhere? I could breed my normal male to 10 normal females, chances are they would all end up normal. If they all were het for something or another, we would have so many normals balls out there. There are many variations of normals though, and thats what makes them special.

So that is just my logical thinking. Basically saying that it could be possible, its just not probable.

EDIT: Hey we joined the same day :P

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Originally Posted by Kristy

If they all were het for something or another, we would have so many normals balls out there.

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That should read, We WOULDN'T have so many normal balls out there. :D

I think I know where you were going with this... and in the wild I would say that every ball (that looks normal, that is) has an ever-so-slight chance of carrying something unique. Who knows who its grandparents were, right?

In captivity, with so many breeders out there, your chances are next to none for being 'het for something.' Is it possible? Perhaps, but if it was captive bred then whoever bred it knew its genetics. :)

Great place for an uber-experienced breeder to chime in- has anyone ever thrown a morph from supposedly normal parents?

Along genetic lines, I wonder if anyone has purposely bred large or long normals, sort of the opposite of the dwarf retics they are breeding... I would love to have a ball that got 7-8 feet, or one that got fat like a burm... I don't know if it's even possible, but it would be cool. I also wonder if there would be any genetic defects with them.

Het for something? Sure! Het for a recognized morph? maybe, maybe not. Just about every trait that we see in our snakes is genetic. Disclaimer - there are traits that are environmental, possibly caused by incubation anomalies, like ringers and other pattern/color anomalies. But, things like high gold, melanistic, black back, jungle pattern, reduced pattern.... those are all most likely genetic, just not necessarily genetically reproducible. Most of the morphs that we have were originally imported as wild caught snakes. That means that there are plenty of snakes in the wild that carry the genetics for these traits. With recessive traits, you can't tell by looking if a snake is a het. So, that CH snake that you picked up at a show/pet store could certainly be carrying the gene for ghost, piebald, clown, albino, lav albino, caramel albino.... But which one??? The only way to know would be to get extremely lucky, or breed child back to mom or dad. Of course, if mom is het for something, and you breed her son back to her and don't get anything, you may have missed the odds, or the son might not have received the gene (50% chance). In the last couple months there have been two different threads here about someone getting morphs by breeding their pet store/CH snakes. One got ghosts (hypos). Here's the thread...
First hatchling ever! :D

and one got PIEDS!!! Here's the thread...
WOW!!! I'm on top of the world!!

So it happens! Not to me (yet), but it happens!

Steve

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Originally Posted by hoo-t

In the last couple months there have been two different threads here about someone getting morphs by breeding their pet store/CH snakes. One got ghosts (hypos). Here's the thread...
First hatchling ever! :D

and one got PIEDS!!! Here's the thread...
WOW!!! I'm on top of the world!!

So it happens! Not to me (yet), but it happens!

Steve

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Make that three ('cause yet another got an albino pin)! :P

Something that you don't see everyday (***Dialup Warning***)

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Make that three ('cause yet another got an albino pin)! :P

Something that you don't see everyday (***Dialup Warning***)

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I was thinking that was the case, but I couldn't remember for sure!

Steve

Actually, your odds are probably even better with normal pythons coming from captive breeders...many people sell low-percentage hets as normals. It's not worth trying to market a 25% or lower chance het, so they simply go out as normals.
Some people don't even bother with 50% chance. I even know of a handful who don't bother to market anything other than a 100% het, and sell everything else as normals.
Granted, you have a lot of 'normal sibling to pastel or spider', but people who have been breeding ball pythons for many generations are more likely to hold back offspring with possible recessives than they are to hold back absolute normals.

Without a doubt there are ball pythons not carrying any recessives for color or pattern mutations.
Keep in mind that it's also possible for them to be carrying recessives for undesireable or even lethal defects.

I voted that there are normals. This would be hard to dispute. However there are definitely a LOT of animals out there that are het for this and that, even out of the wild.

An example would be the yellowbellies or het ivories. There are quite a few imported into the us as ch babies every year. Yet only one or two homozygous Ivories have ever been imported.

On the other hand some recessive snakes like pieds and albinos are much more commonly imported even in their homozygous form. Meaning that the there are far more hets for these traits out there in the wild than there are ybs... you just can't pick them out. :)

That may seem a little confusing but I hope you get the point.

:)

Justin

i say this because i have a het hypo male that has IDENTICLE body patterns as a snake that was bought from joe compel and given to me....... so i was contemplating her being het, and if she possibly had some het in her, then maybe all snakes are het for something that just hasnt been proven yet because they havent been mated to a snake with that same gene. if that makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Kristy

EDIT: Hey we joined the same day :P

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HI 5 !!!! :carrot:

can an experienced breeder please help with some info

There are a number of different pattern types that are considered "normal", such as jungle, reduced, black backed, granite, etc. Some of them, IF proved reproducible, are considered morphs, such as granite and jungle. There are traits that we look for also, such as flames, blushing, eye color, etc.

With recessive traits, for the most part, there are no visual clues that the snake is carrying the gene. Your het hypo, for example, does not exhibit anything visually that would give a clue that it is a het hypo. If you have another snake that has all the same traits, chances are its just luck of the draw. I'm pretty sure I could go to my collection and pick out a het pied, a het albino, and a normal that all have very similar patterns and colors. There are some "markers" for some recessive traits that people look for, like belly pattern on het pieds. The problem is, not all het pieds exhibit the marker, and not all snakes that do have it are het pieds.

Whether your new snake is a het is an unknown. Sure, its possible, but the ONLY way to know for sure is to breed the two snakes together and see what you get. Assuming that your het hypo is truly a het (really can't say that until he produces a hypo baby), all the normal appearing babies produced by breeding him to the new girl would be 50% het, unless you produce a hypo. If you do produce a hypo, then all the normal appearing babies are 66% hets. This is because after producing a hypo, the FEMALE has been proven as a het.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, saying 50% het hypo does NOT have anything to do with 50% of the genetics of the snake! The 50% is a probability only! So, a 50% het hypo has a 50% chance of being heterozygous for the hypo trait. Once the snake produces a hypo, its no longer a 50% het, its now 100%. Once it produces a hypo, there's no question that it carries the gene, so the 50% probability is gone.

If you really want to know if that girl is carrying something, the way to do it is to breed her to your male and hold back all the babies. Breed the male babies back to mom to see if anything cool pops out. Also breed the male babies to their sisters to check them too. Bear in mind that the 50% probabilities will apply to the babies. For example, let say your female is het for "somemorph". All her babies will be 50% het for hypo (if you breed your het hypo male to her), and 50% het for "somemorph". Lets say you get 2 male babies. The first season that the baby males are mature enough, you breed "male1" to mom. You get all normal babies. Doesn't prove ANYTHING, but implies that "male1" is a normal. The next season, you breed "male2" to mom. This time you get one or two "somemorphs". You just proved your female and "male2" as het for "somemorph"!

Also, remember that all the babies will be 50% het hypo! If you breed brother x sister, there's a possibility of producing hypos. A better way to do that, though, is to breed the female babies back to dad, because he's supposed to be 100% het.

So, breed them, keep all the babies, breed the male babies back to mom, and the female babies back to dad. Hopefully, the females x dad will produce some hypos. And its possible that the males x mom will produce something cool too (just don't hold your breath!).

Hope this helps somewhat.
Steve

Another example just posted on KS by Steve Roussis. As I understand it, he bred a het pied to another snake (he didn't say whether it was a morph or a normal) and got an all white snake. That's not supposed to happen - pieds are recessive, pieds have some dark pattern mixed with white, heads are not white, etc., etc.! I can't wait to hear more details.
:taz:

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Originally Posted by Alice

Another example just posted on KS by Steve Roussis. As I understand it, he bred a het pied to another snake (he didn't say whether it was a morph or a normal) and got an all white snake. That's not supposed to happen - pieds are recessive, pieds have some dark pattern mixed with white, heads are not white, etc., etc.! I can't wait to hear more details.
:taz:

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do u have a link???

and thanks for all the help steve!!

Part of me thinks that eventually, the price of actual normals will go up. I am talking way, way down the road. People love the morphs, sure. But people are always going to want "clean" normal stock (especially females) for breeding programs.

I don't know if this has been covered yet, but all normals have a chance for being het for a recessive trait. The recessive trait could be a genetic reduced pattern, or perhaps a very busy pattern. Perhaps they have a nice clear belly, or are very dark. Maybe they are high gold, or have many alien heads. It's hard to say really, when such subtle designs and colors are so common among normals, how can we know that a particular pattern or variation is genetic?

We don't recognize these as 'Morphs' (besides the genetic reduced), but they can still be homozygous or het for those traits.

If you are talking about visual morphs accepted by the hobby like pied, albino, cinnamon etc.... then I say your chances are still there, but slim. They are so different from a normal animal, that it is most definitely a slimmer chance of a Normal animal being het for the outrageously different trait.

Did that make any sense? :P