Quote Originally Posted by Ophiuchus View Post
Probably a little after the fact, but if anyone was insistent on referring to snakes as "breeds", I would call the species ball python the breed, and the albinism is a variation.

Ex:

You can have black labradors, white labs, and chocolate labs....but they're all of the same 'breed" (i.e. labrador retrievers).

Thus, you have albino BPs, piebalds, pastels, etc...but they're all ball pythons.
I've never heard the term "breed" used for species of reptiles. I've heard of dog breeds, horse breeds, goat breeds, cat breeds, but never breeds of reptiles...

And generally with the different dog breeds you get physical changes, such as coat color, size, conformation in general, etc... To get a "pure" breed you have to keep line breeding until all the offspring produced look identical. Although classified as the same species, I would personally classify different "breeds" of dogs similar to subspecies.