I think I stumbled on the new NERD website a few weeks ago and you are looking at the old site which I suspect is a little dated. NERD’s first pearl predated all other public white ball pythons. Graziani’s site puts the first pearl at 2000, a year after Spider was proven genetic. Before the pearl a white ball python was a mythical creature of legend. There were stories of babies in bottles at exporters and of one passing through the states on the way to Asia but no pictures to convince the doubters. I suspect NERD has produced pearl more than twice now. To put the amount of ball python morph world change of the last 7 years into perspective it’s now gotten to the point that people say things like “not another white snake” (which seems more than a little silly to me) when we used to say things like “do you think there really was or ever will be a leucistic ball python?” But I wax nostalgic; don’t get me started on rec.pet.herps. Funny the feuds and scandals are about the same even if the technology and morphs have increased exponentially.

The new NERD site gives a little more information on pearl here:

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/ner...d=79&Itemid=58

There was a report a few years ago of an adult imported animal that looked to be a pearl which would tend to give some hope but I never heard if it reproduced and was proven to be the same thing or not.

Of course actual breeding results would be best for being sure about anything but if a homozygous spider does exist I wouldn't expect it's offspring to have any problems that the spider offspring of a normal heterozygous spider don't have. The only difference from the offspring standpoint should be 100% rather than 50% spider offspring, if there could be a breeding homozygous spider to start with regardless of what it would be like. It's not like a homozygous spider could give two copies of the spider gene to the same offspring. Any genetics a homozygous spider could pass on a heterozygous one could also pass on, just in different ratios. I could maybe see a mutation where a female might not be able to lay good eggs but if the male could hatch with a mutation so should the offspring he passes a single copy on to.

I've had my share of bad luck hatching eggs over the years and we always try to figure out something to do better so keep at it and better luck next year.