Possibly, a Sable?

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Okay. So, what actually brought me to this forum, was some curiosity regarding a ball python I acquired a few months ago. I guess the story is needed. It goes like this. I attended the daytona show last year, and also attended the auction afterwards. During the silent auction, I noticed a baby ball python that caught my eye. He was listed as a normal, but he really made me hover over him. He was beautifully dark and had rich, velvety, shiny skin which really stood out. He had beautiful highly contrasting white streaks up his sides, as well as flaming. The thing that made up my mind to bid on him were the bright yellow spots on his nose. I know that sometimes this can be a sign of something good, and so I placed a bid of $20 and ended up winning him. For $20, what the heck? I guess nobody else examined him closely.

So time has passed and this snake is now approaching a year of age and is becoming a young man. He still makes me stop and go "wow" every time I look at him. I didn't really think too much other than he's just a really pretty BP, until I recently read some stuff concerning sables. That's when I realized that he has many traits indicative of sables, including that beautiful irridescence and velvet-like skin. That there is something i cannot photograph very well. You take him out and you hold him, and he wows you with the most perfect, shiny skin ever. All of the black parts on him shine blue in the sunlight. Its truely gorgeous. He is still a beautiful dark color and getting darker. He has granitey speckles on his sides, as well as flames. He has black markings on his belly and his belly is starting to get hints of a grayish wash to them. he has a lot of deformed "alien heads" and spots on his nose, which I know not all sables have. He has no real neck stripe and the top of his head has light spots of color on it, which I have seen in many sable pics. I am not saying he is a sable, but I am saying, there's a chance he may be. I want some opinions! The reason I waited 2 hours for this 20 dollar snake was because I felt he was "different" and even told a woman who was going to bid on it that there was no point because I was going to keep going higher!! At the time, I knew of a sable's existence, but i did not know the traits.

These pictures are pretty good, but still don't do him justice. To behold just how neat he is you have to be able to physically take him in your hands and hold him.

First some indoors showing off his various features.













Then here are some others outside attempting to capture his beautiful velvety skin!

[llovelace]

Sorry I can't answer your question, but he is a handsome fella, Do you live here in Fl?

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

I live in Pennsylvania, thanks!

[Pinoy Pythons]

Pics # 7 and 8 shows her wicked irridescence, but im not good in determining sables. But probably some members can, like Muddoc, he helped me out last time I had questions regarding sables. Anyway, very nice pick up!

[Kysenia]

Lovely animal.......welcome to bp.net

[Mike Cavanaugh]

great looking normal.

[LadyOhh]

That is a very nice dark normal.

Here is my Sable for comparison.

[muddoc]

It looks like a normal to me. Sables have a very mottled looking belly. The black is all jumbled up on the belly, with a gray wash, and they typically have very strange shaped alien heads. They also tend to get darker with age. I would say that for the size of your snake, it is not dark enough to be a Sable.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

beautiful pictures, thanks for the input!!! I did know there was an extremely big difference in the bellies!!! My specialty is garter snakes. I tend to stay out of the ball python morph hype... too much going on! I know a lot about genetics and how they work and all that jazz, but i don't dabble too heavily into the 2957829573 different flavors of BP's. My favorite kind of ball python, hands down, is a well selected normal, so I am kind of happy that I have, indeed, such a nice normal!!!

any ideas as to why this one is so shiny then???!! is he secretly applying lotion when I am not looking?!?! haha

[Kesslers Kreatures]

is he secretly applying lotion

It's no secret, Applying lotion to your balls makes them shiney.