I'm speechless right now...

[FireStorm]

There is no such thing as as a 50% het. It's just 66% het or 100%het

Visual (Homozygous) x Normal or Het = 100% hets
Het x Het = 66% possible hets (from the normal appearing offspring)
Het x Normal = 50% possible hets

At this point since mom isn't proven het Pied, the normal appearing offspring are 66% poss het Albino, 50% poss het Pied.

[OmNomNom]

There are certainly defects with certain morphs. The spider has a head wobble; desert females have their infertility.... Any female desert morph is affected by this too... The champ spider is what we call a Lethal morph - it doesnt survive long out of the egg... Sable spider is also one of these... Super cinnies tend to have some defects like duck bills and stuff theres a number of them out there...

Interesting! (well, not for the lethals, I'm sure they would probably feel differently about the matter...) But I love seeing things like that...it means you've found something interesting/important! ....now if only we had the genome sequence.

Yes, Pied is a recessive trait. There are "het pied markers" but it's not a sure thing. For example, I'd bet money that the hatchling I just posted pics of above is het Pied. But there are plenty of het Pieds out there that look completely normal.

As for why people work with hets, there are several reasons. When the first Pied was imported from Africa, it was bred to normals (making what the BP community calls 100% hets), since there were no other Pieds available. Then the hets could be bred to the original Pied, or to each other, to produce more Pieds.

The other reason for working with hets involves cost. When I bought my original males, Pieds were still a few thousand dollars, and a pair of 100% hets was over $1000. So I made possible hets, since a single het Pied male was significantly cheaper.

And the reason for lableing these babies as "possible double hets" is so that if they are sold, whoever gets them can try to prove them out if they wish.


Some traits are known to be allelic, for example Butter, Lesser Platinum, and Mojave, or Yellowbelly, Spector, Spark, and Het. Highway.

As for color and pattern mutations, a pinstripe is always one color unless it is combined with another morph, and then the possibilities are endless

Very cool! I didn't realize the ball python community had kept such detailed track of all the morphs and possible alleles (I suppose that's kind of a "well, duh"). I just saw the "genetics calculator" someone has been making. From all that (if someone hasn't already) it should be possible to sit down and map out the different alleles and figure out which ones are the same genes (but different mutations) or genes on the same chromosome. Er....not sure if that would exactly be helpful...but it would be cool!

[Andybill]

There is no such thing as as a 50% het. It's just 66% het or 100%het

The percentage only refers to the likeliness of a snake being het for something. There is such thing as 50% het:

http://www.worldofballpythons.com/wizard/

- - - Updated - - -

Visual (Homozygous) x Normal or Het = 100% hets
Het x Het = 66% possible hets (from the normal appearing offspring)
Het x Normal = 50% possible hets

At this point since mom isn't proven het Pied, the normal appearing offspring are 66% poss het Albino, 50% poss het Pied.

LOL you beat me!