The (Drama FREE) Desert Thread. A different Perspective.

[purplemuffin]

To be honest I am curious and would love the project to work out, but I am still not holding out too much hope for it. I think the reasons females are being sold at such high is because breeders truly believe the project will work out even if they don't have the proof themselves. Whether that's blind faith or they know something they aren't telling us, I don't know. I personally wouldn't sell females right now(Honestly with a morph like this even without problems, I'd keep every female I got so I could make more of these guys. Then with the problems I'd still keep them to see where in price these guys are gonna go and if any of them will lay healthy eggs)

I've always felt that ball pythons need a much greater temperature gradient than we often give them. It makes sense that certain morphs(aka mutations) would be more sensitive than the hardy normal, it's the same with many animals. Think about specifically bred cats and dogs, even with careful breeding certain traits just lead to sensitive stomachs-doesn't mean they have special needs normal cats wouldn't, but they are less able to accept the flaws in our own husbandry(bad cat food, etc).. My ball python used to be in a 55 gallon tank with tons of hides and a huge heat gradient. It was a lot of work keeping up the humidity and heat, but I found that maru used quite a bit of the tank. He would travel from hide to hide and enjoy the heat after a nice meal and sometimes cool off on the other end. He ate well and everything seemed to work great. We ended up having to move him into a tub because of reorginizing the house, and he took a while to get used to the situation. He's fine in it now, though even to this day he hugs the cold side far more often than the warm side, but I would enjoy one day giving him a bigger enclosure again, but one that was actually BUILT and holds in humidity rather than a tank! But that's just me. I don't have many animals, so I can afford to spoil them a bit more. And if he never ends up using the cooler end of the enclosure, that's okay, it will still look nice. He'll have identical safe hides all over where he can choose his comfort level

But anyway, the point is I think just like how the spider gene is sensitive to stress/excitement (wobble) and shows it's stress more than a ball python normal who experiences the same amount of stress, the desert possibly is a mix of genes that just happens to make the snake less tolerant of bad situations(Like crowntail bettas are NOT very tolerant to hard water, simply how the genes work out) meaning if you want deserts you gotta keep them in PERFECT conditions! But it could just be these specific animals, who knows!

OR..it could be infertile/really really close to infertile like some of the hybrid species(SO many dead clutches for one or two successful hatches..)

I feel it could end up being the latter--yes fertile, but you'll end up with a lot of slugs before you get eggs. It feels like we are getting some successes but a lot of failures, but things could always change.

I would be very happy to see deserts work out, I love them! But if they don't, I won't be too surprised, sadly. If they do.. bring on the deserts!


It is just crazy to see so many desert pairings happening with no clutch results. I see it on here, facebook, and other herp sites. The threads just die off about a week before the snake is supposed to lay, and suddenly they are never mentioned again!

Unfortunately that's the risk you take when working with genetics. If this rumor is true, a lot of people will have wasted a lot of money. Not like that's the first time this has happened though! Plenty of unique snakes have been imported for incredibly high prices, only to find out it isn't genetic or died on the way over. Awful, but that's what happens. It's a new gene, these people could possibly make thousands off of these animals if it works out, or they might have wasted that money on females who won't breed. We'll see how the lottery turns out.


As of what I have seen so far I say it isn't gonna happen. If someone proves me wrong later on, HUGE congrats!! Til then, I'll just watch the drama unfold