so....


Can we agree that when only breeding ball pythons to ball pythons, you could reverse the genders of the parents and it would not make a difference, except for banana / coral glow?

hybrids are actually not on topic here since the original thread is only about BPs, but while its started.... I think hybrids are not a good idea, except to maybe move specific genes across the species barrier. Which would easily be a 30-year project. In rat snakes / corn snakes / etc it is being done i think. But it seems to be hard or near impossible to do with pythons. There are hybrids, but to move a gene across the species barrier, you need to make a hybrid, then breed it to ball python, breed it to ball python again, and again, and you need to get to a point where its 90%+ ball python and 10% some other python species, and then (if it carries a new visual gene along with it) prove it out in ball pythons. And because they are still hybrids people may simply reject it. Theoretically it is a way to move individual genes across the species barrier, but it really would take many decades and its risky and you produce a ton of 50% and 25% and 12.5% and 6.25% hybrids. Its crazy, really.