Quote Originally Posted by mainbutter View Post
Your question is a bit generic, so I'll split it up into two parts:

With two low quality individuals, if they bred, would you get a variety of offspring ranging from ugly to beautiful?

Doubtful, but within the realm of possibility. Yes, two short people can have tall children. Two dark haired people can have a blonde child. Two ugly snakes can have a pretty snake offspring. It's unlikely, but it can happen, you never really know how the genetics that each parent contributes may line up, but genetics are powerful. That means two things:
1) offspring can be fairly predictable
2) selective breeding can create drastic change

In general, both parents' quality will be apparent in the offspring. In particular for ball pythons, color/brightness seems surprisingly easy to pass on and predict.

With two low quality individuals, and a few generations of line breeding with offspring, can you produce high quality individuals?

Quite likely. It will probably take multiple generations to isolate the "good looks" genetics and cull the "bad looks" genetics from a line (or at least get some combination that works in a way to produce a nice looking snake), but I've got confidence in the power of selective breeding, whether it occurs in nature or in a human's basement, to make changes.
My nearly 6 foot, fair-skinned, blonde, blue eyed parents produced me, a 5'3" red head with green eyes and tawny skin.

I look exactly my 3rd cousins who are the Welsh side of the family.

Sometimes, recessive genes will have their way....*big time*.



Having said that, I'm saving my pennies for a nice pastel female for my fire male.

It seems like a good starting point.

[but better ideas will be welcomed cheerfully]