Tiger BP's... Any Experts?

[Joe_Compel]

First off....is your animal captive bred or imported? Do you know where it came from?
If it came from a breeder, she or he should be able to shed some light. If it was imported, the you are going have to do the work and answer your own questions

"Tiger" is a tough one......

It is one of the morphs/variants of ball pythons that can be very confusing. The appearance of genetic ones can be variable. More than one breeder has tiger stock......stock that is not related.....stock that may or may not even be the same mutation. In other words, what one breeder calls a tiger another breeder may not....even though both may have "genetic tigers".

To me the tiger morph needs to be "overhauled." I'm sure it will happen with time.

Years ago, when the proven morphs were limited to albino, pastel, axanthic, and a FEW others, many imported ball pythons with odd patterns were lumped into rather generic categories: granites, jungles, labyrinths, high gold, reduced pattern, banded, fancy normal, etc. These generic categories were overhauled over the years and are still being overhauled today.

Some of these odd balls proved to be genetic and were renamed to distinguish them from the unproven bp's in the generic categories.

I think this is what needs to happen with tigers. It will take some time for breeders to figure out what they have. After all, if one breeder breeds his/her tigers together and produces reduced offspring while another breeds their tigers and produces a tricked out super form or homozygous form........shouldn't one of the "tigers" be renamed?

There is a tiger line associated with Joliff axanthics. Casey Lazik has something associated with his hypo animals that he is calling Lazik Tigers. I see ads in the classifieds where breeders claim to have genetic reduced pattern bp's.......called tigers. There is some cool tiger stuff being worked out in Canada.
Are they all the same mutation? I don't think so. I guess time will tell

Hope this helps.