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

[mischevious21]

maybe Al Gore knows

LMFAO!

[SUPERBALLS]

LMFAO!

call me old but what the hell does that stand for

[mischevious21]

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

[wendy]

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

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

[SUPERBALLS]

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

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

you mean manbearpig

[mischevious21]

wow, how random- but interesting...

[Soulkitchen]

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

[panthercz]

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.

[AndrewGeibel]

you mean manbearpig

You just made my day! I love that episode.

[PythonWallace]

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.