Super Morphs

[Eric Alan]

Why is it that a morph like fire is about 50-100 dollars depending on the snake but a super fire is around 500? Is it because it looks better? Or is it a good snake to breed? I don't understand some of the prices for some morphs.

Both. A Super Fire is a white snake with black eyes, which is visually appealing to the masses, and has the guaranteed ability to pass along the Fire gene to all of its offspring which is desirable to breeders. Fire by itself is a common base morph which, to a person off the street, doesn't look much different than a normal ball python and can only pass along the Fire gene to half of its offspring. When it comes to pricing, it's all about supply and demand. These things are especially magnified when the Super form is vastly different visually from the corresponding single gene form.

The same logic can be applied to recessive genes. The homozygous ("visual") form of the gene will always command a much higher price than the heterozygous ("het") form of the gene.