can someone explain...

[Lauren]

hey all,

ok so i've been reading on genetics of BPs just out of curiosity... provided i didnt get my info from unreliable sites -> i get that genetic morphs deal with genes and visual morphs look different (duh ) but i was wondering what some 'visual' morphs are ... like what traits do you look for when on the search for a visual morph...

this was all spurred from someone asking me if my snakes were morphs

they noticed that caramel had a stripe down her back (not completely solid) and butterscotch had lots of yellow (not so bright anymore) and that she had lots of 'blushing' and a nearly white belly... i just kind of laughed it off because i'm pretty sure if they were special i wouldnt have gotten them for 30 bucks a pop, but it did get me slightly interested in knowing the differences.

this picture doesnt really do either one of them justice ... mostly because of the camera but butterscotch is in shed so her colors dont really show (pic in my gallery if interested in seeing her 'true' colors)


thanks for your info

[cassandra]

I'm certainly not a resident expert here, but they look like lovely normals to me. I "see" various morphs sometimes when I look at Cleo, but I know it's just lovely variations in how ball pythons look.

Those wiser than me, please correct me if I'm wrong, but several normal animals within the same species will look slightly different, based on what their parents looked like, kind of like thumbprints.

Also, most ball pythons in the US are imported babies, coming from West African. The ball python trade is huge business in those countries and those who traffic in them know exactly what they are selling; they're not going to miss a morph animal since that animal is worth much, much more.

[mr~python]

cassandra's right. those are both normals. i like caramels broken stripe though. my male has a stripe down his back like that. he's on the left.

[jglass38]

Check out : www.ballpython.ca/genetics.html

Mark explains things very well with pretty pictures!