Het Question!

[Dextrad]

Sometimes you may know if your buying a het ball python but my question is if you think your buying a normal can it be het for something without knowing?

[The Serpent Merchant]

It is possible by definition a het looks no different from a normal type ball python.

But a het isn't going to come out of nowhere... if the parents didn't cary the gene neither can the offspring.

[Dextrad]

So basically the only way to test that would be to breed him, correct? There's no way to just look at him and tell? Well I know supposedly "het pie marks" but there's been plenty of balls without the markings that had produced piedballs.

[The Serpent Merchant]

You can determine the %het (if at all) by what the parents were. (% het simply refers to the chances of being het) Unless the parents cause the snake to be 100% het the only way to know is to breed the snake in question.

[snakesRkewl]

It is possible by definition a het looks no different from a normal type ball python.

The definition is wrong when dealing with ball pythons. heterozygous traits often alter the look of normal wild type traits and other morphs.

[paulh]

All gene pairs are either homozygous or heterozygous.

A homozygous gene pair is made up of two genes that are the same. Examples -- two copies of the normal gene or two copies of a mutant gene such as the pinstripe mutant, the mojave mutant, or the albino mutant.

A heterozygous gene pair is made up of two genes that are not the same. Examples -- a normal gene and a dominant mutant gene, a normal gene and a codominant mutant gene, a normal gene and a recessive mutant gene, or two different mutant genes.

If the heterozygous gene pair is made up of a normal gene and a dominant mutant gene, then the snake usually does not look normal. Example -- a pinstripe ball python with a pinstripe mutant gene paired with a normal gene.

If the heterozygous gene pair is made up of a normal gene and a codominant mutant gene, then the snake usually does not look normal. Example -- a mojave ball python with a mojave mutant gene paired with a normal gene.

If the heterozygous gene pair is made up of a normal gene and a recessive mutant gene, then the snake usually looks normal. Example -- a normal looking ball python with an albino mutant gene paired with a normal gene.

When a herper uses "het", he usually means that the gene pair is made up of a normal gene and a recessive mutant gene. This is a holdover from the days when all known mutant reptile genes were recessive to the corresponding normal gene. But those days have been over for more than 15 years.

When the mutant gene is recessive to the corresponding normal gene and neither parent has two copies of that recessive mutant gene, then there is only one way to find out whether a given baby is heterozygous -- a breeding test.

For what it's worth, once I had a baby dove show up with two copies of a recessive mutant gene. I had to trace the pedigree back five generations on one side to find an ancestor with two copies of that recessive mutant gene. For at least three generations, we had bred hets and thought they were normals.

[OhhWatALoser]

Personally I find this easier to read. Unproven dominant is pretty much made up, but I feel it's necessary to differentiate.

	Recessive	Co-Dom/Incomplete Dom	Dominant	Unproven Dominant
Heterozygous	No Visible Change	Visible Change	Visible Change	Visible Change
Homozygous	Visible Change	Different Visible Change	Same Visible Change	???

To the OP, there always a chance something unknown is lurking, by chances are very slim.