Carpet Pythons

[mainbutter]

I'm going to explain a bit that may help clear some things up.

The latin name for carpet pythons is Morelia spilota

There are a bunch of subspecies of M. spilota, the most common of which in the US go by the common names:

Irian jaya*
Coastal
Jungle
Diamond

If you crossed two subspecies, say a coastal and a jungle, then the offspring would be "50% coastal jungle".

If you then bred those offspring to a pure coastal, they would be "75% coastal 25% jungle", which could be shortened to simply "75% coastal jungle". This is because each parent contributes to half of the genetic makeup of the offspring.

If you took THOSE offspring and bred them AGAIN to a pure coastal, you end up with 87.5% coastal 12.5% jungles.. or shortened and rounded up to simply "88% coastal jungles"

Now - to the snakes you mentioned.

I am very sure that what you mean to say was that you saw "88% IJ JAGUARS" This gets confusing, as we're going to be dealing with SUBSPECIES CROSSES (aka intergrades) as well as an incomplete dominant trait.

The jaguar trait is an incomplete dominant color and pattern trait, with the homozygous form being lethal (hatchlings die in the egg or soon after hatching, and interestingly enough don't develop any color and are pure white). In addition, they experience wobbling or "neuro" issues similar to spider ball pythons.

The jaguar trait is believed to have originated in a coastal carpet python. There is some debate about the purity of the founding jaguar that popped up in Europe some years ago, so often the non-jaguar offspring that are children of a jaguar parent are sold as "jaguar siblings", so that they don't get unintentionally passed off as well-documented pure subspecies.

Because the various subspecies have different looks, there has been selective line breeding to hatch out jaguar-trait animals that have lots of genetic makeup coming from another subspecies. These snakes are not pure localities, they are not pure subspecies, they are "designer mutts". Any jaguar that is a "diamond jaguar" or "IJ jaguar" or "jungle jaguar" or anything like that is a cross between subspecies.

If you are really interested in carpet pythons, I urge you to check out the http://www.moreliapythons.com forum. It's a great place to read, talk, and learn.

If you want to see some truly spectacular designer intergrade carpet pythons, go check out John Battaglia's Gamma-line jaguars and Diamond-jungles over at http://www.moreliatrophyclub.com. I was lucky enough to pick up a pair of carpet pythons off him last year