When did these morph's show up????

I have kept ball pythons on and off since the early eighties, why haven't we seen these

morphs years ago?:

Because people were still either proving them out or finding WC specimens. Well thats my guess.

The first morph was the albino in like 92. I remember seeing Bob Clark's ads for them in reptiles magazine for like 10-15k. I was thinking wow an albino ball python. I'll never have one of them. What did I buy last year? An albino of course. :)

Considering they are finding more and more morphs these days maybe its due to a bigger issue like acid rain, radiation or pollution. I wonder if anyone is actually studying the genetics involved?

I highly doubt acid rain has anything to do with it. I think a lot of these morphs have always been here. It's just in the last 10 to 20 years the demand in America has skyrocketed. Now everyone and their mother is combing over every square inch of Africa in hopes of getting rich.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dacalio

I highly doubt acid rain has anything to do with it. I think a lot of these morphs have always been here. It's just in the last 10 to 20 years the demand in America has skyrocketed. Now everyone and their mother is combing over every square inch of Africa in hopes of getting rich.

---

That's what I call hitting the nail on the head. Great Post.

acid rain, come on this isnt a sci-fi movie,this is real life, not a samual l jackson film:D

global warming? lmao

maybe Al Gore knows:gj:

:rofl:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SUPERBALLS

maybe Al Gore knows:gj:

---

:8: LMFAO!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mischevious21

:8: LMFAO!

---

call me old but what the hell does that stand for

Nah, your not old. It stands for laugh my f****ing a** off. Just a abreviation, and doesnt sound so bad :)

maybe this six legged deer knows..........lol

http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&vid=...3194&GT1=42003

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wendy

maybe this six legged deer knows..........lol

http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&vid=...3194&GT1=42003

---

you mean manbearpig

wow, how random- but interesting...

In the past there were plenty of BP's carrying unique genetics. The reason we didn't see all these morphs is because people didn't yet know what to look for. Now that we have some "clues" on various genetic markers, we can look for "marked" snakes and selectively breed them, thus resulting in the variety of morphs available today.

My $.02

These morphs were always out there. Just look at how long ago Piebalds were around, I think Peter Kahls website says there were reports of a pied back in the 60's and 2 were brought to this country in the 80's.

I think the big thing to remember is that people weren't looking for them. There was no ball python craze, so therefore, no one out there looking for ball python morphs.
Both the VPI and NERD books cover how no one cared about ball pythons initially.

And as far as pollution goes in causing these morphs...that's beyond far fetched. Tons of species are highly variable and carry genetic traits that have nothing to do with external factors. Plus where is this pollution coming from? Out in the middle of the Savannah there is little to no human influence that would be causing anything like this happen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SUPERBALLS

you mean manbearpig

---

You just made my day! I love that episode.

I can't think of any causes for genetic mutations to start happening in greater numbers in the last 20 years, but I would think that we should be finding thousands of samples of some of the subtler looking dominant and co-dom morphs in the wild. If all these mutations have been there for millions, or even only a few thousand years, I would think certain areas would be full of them since there isn't anything visual about them that would make them stick out to preditors any more than a normal would, and the phenotype is passed to half of all offspring from normal breedings. Some of the morphs are likely far less noticable to preditors than even wild types, and a few of them seem to have more aggressive feeding habits than normals, yet I would guess that less than 1-2% of the WC animals are any of these morphs. If these morphs have all been there forever, I'm surprised we don't see tons of them in the wild, as well as more than a few subtle combos. It's an interesting topic.

People used to think that the white on pieds was a fungus, and so they didn't want them (according to what I've read on the matter).

Long long long time ago they used to worship ball pythons in some african tribes...it was know as python worship, the barker book talks about it, they had some white snakes!:D

it still goes on today in some tribes.

Let me reiterate my previous statement of saying that morphs have been around forever. Saying that would be wrong, but morphs being around for quite some time would be more appropriate.

As far as lots of them being around in the wild. A little more comes into play than just their ability to avoid being eaten to account for their numbers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by panthercz

As far as lots of them being around in the wild. A little more comes into play than just their ability to avoid being eaten to account for their numbers.

---

Please explain your ideas.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PythonWallace

Please explain your ideas.

---

Some quick things as I'm not going to write a dissertation on natural selection:
What are the statistical odds of a ball python reaching maturity in the wild? They aren't the greatest, so what would the odds be a lone morph hatching out and reaching breeding age? Then what are the odds that morph successfully breeding and passing on it's traits? Perhaps it's a male and breed with a female but that female had already bred and none of the offspring are the morphs or she slugs out. If that male morph missed out on just one season, then who's to say it even survives to the next breeding season?
Then you got even worse odds if that morph is recessive.

You may actually get a small pocket of morphs, say pastel's in one area, then a predator comes in (say a honey badger) and eats that small isolated group. Well there went all your pastels. Same could go for a disease wiping them out. Or humans coming in and catching all the snakes for food or the leather trade. NERDS albino water monitor was found at a skinning station. I can only imagine the number of morphs killed over the last couple hundred years for food or leather that we don't know about.

Inevitably some will always make, hence why we have the morphs we do.

Oh and let me add that in 50,000 years, who knows, perhaps the "normal" ball python will no longer exist and is completely replaced by a morph. Perhaps that morph will be better suited base on pattern to surviving and over time end up replacing the "normal" phenotype.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by panthercz

Oh and let me add that in 50,000 years, who knows, perhaps the "normal" ball python will no longer exist and is completely replaced by a morph. Perhaps that morph will be better suited base on pattern to surviving and over time end up replacing the "normal" phenotype.

---

And maybe, that's already happened. :]
Natural selection plays a big part in this.. as humans we find two genes that we want and we're able to breed those. Whats the real chance of those genes actually meeting the wild? Lets say theres a wild Albino.. what are the chances of it meeting another Albino? Slim to none, so if it breeds it's probably going to breed to a normal creating hets. What are the chances of those hets surviving and meeting other hets or albinos? A bit higher because the albino parent is still around as well as the brothers and sisters, but thats still an isolated area, where albino animals don't blend too well so they would obviously not have a very good chance of survival.
Most eggs layed by ball pythons in the wild too don't make it, are eaten, or the hatchlings die.

First let me say that I didn't mean to sound like I was picking on you, or anybody. I don't even think I read your earlier post before I posted. I really don't have any answers and I think it's an interesting topic. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by panthercz

Some quick things as I'm not going to write a dissertation on natural selection:
What are the statistical odds of a ball python reaching maturity in the wild? They aren't the greatest, so what would the odds be a lone morph hatching out and reaching breeding age? Then what are the odds that morph successfully breeding and passing on it's traits? Perhaps it's a male and breed with a female but that female had already bred and none of the offspring are the morphs or she slugs out. If that male morph missed out on just one season, then who's to say it even survives to the next breeding season?

The morphs are obviously out there in small numbers. That being said, the chances are the same as the normals in the area. I also think that ball pythons have a pretty good rate of surviving and reproducing. They obviously have preditors, but the shear numbers that are found in small pockets of Ghana, Togo and Benin, even after exporting hundreds of thousands of them year after year says a lot about how hardy they are in their natural environment.

Then you got even worse odds if that morph is recessive.

I understand that, I'm just talking about the subtle dominant and co-dominant morphs for now since the hets are visable when they are collected.

You may actually get a small pocket of morphs, say pastel's in one area, then a predator comes in (say a honey badger) and eats that small isolated group. Well there went all your pastels.

That makes sense, but we're talking about the morphs that we know are there, and if they've been around so long they would have thousands of years or more to repopulate. Your scenario would probably even have the opposite effect than what you are saying. If an area of BPs gets dessimated, and the area has, say normals and sables, the normals would be just as easy of a target. Once the survivors started repopulating the area, the sables would have less competition from normals and should soon make up a good size of the local population. At least in my mind.

Same could go for a disease wiping them out. Or humans coming in and catching all the snakes for food or the leather trade. NERDS albino water monitor was found at a skinning station. I can only imagine the number of morphs killed over the last couple hundred years for food or leather that we don't know about.

Inevitably some will always make, hence why we have the morphs we do.

I'm just saying that, especially the subtle variations, have just as good of a shot at making it and reproducing as a wild type. If they've been out there for thousands of years having the same chances as a wild type and proding 50% morphs with every hatchling, I would think that by now there would be huge populations of things like ciinies, mojos, sables, YBs, etc. So many that they should be very common after thousands or millions of years to the point of even finding plenty of combos and supers. While BELs and ivories likely wouldn't survive very long in Africa, I don't see why super sables, super cinnies and combos of these wouldn't have the same chances as wild types. Now once you have supers or combos out there, 75% - 100% off any offspring are going to be a co-dom morph. It just seems like we would see a ton more of these coming from WC animals. We're talking hundreds of thousands, or more years of 40+ co-doms breeding, and producing 50% co-dom clutches each time.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by panthercz

Oh and let me add that in 50,000 years, who knows, perhaps the "normal" ball python will no longer exist and is completely replaced by a morph. Perhaps that morph will be better suited base on pattern to surviving and over time end up replacing the "normal" phenotype.

---

Sure. Who's to say that ball pythons were'nt originally all homozygous pinstripes that had a genetic mutation somewhere along the line that produced the wild type we see today? Then the wild type was naturally better at not getting eaten, causing the wild type population to quickly outgrown the pinstripe genetics to the point of becoming the dominant color and pattern mutation.