Sables tend to be darker in the black areas of the snake. They often times will have an immense amount of black speckling in the brown alien heads. They also will often times have connecting alien eyes that form one large eye in the alien head, compared to the two eyes often seen in normal patterned ball pythons. They also have very grey and motled bellies. Lastly, they seem to have more irridiphores in the skin cells giving them a shinier appearance and making them harder to photograph because of flash bounce back.

The best way to get an eye for them is to go to a show, and try to actually put your eyes on a few, as they do have distinguishing traits, but are still considered farily subtle in their heterozygous form.