Killer bee

[Eric Alan]

OK,

Back to my original post. I am new to ball pythons and their morphology. I assume that someone found some different morphs in the wild and then took the time to breed to select certain traits. I imagine there must have been a great diversity of different types in order to come up with such a different variety of different looks. Is that pretty much the case? About how long ago did this gene selection process start to get us to where we are today?

That's actually not really the case. What you're referring to is line breeding, which is a good practice, but not really a primary focus of most people in the hobby (selecting good examples, yes - line breeding, not so much). Most of the single gene morphs were found in the wild looking much like they still do today. Morph ball pythons have only really been a thing for 25 years or so, and have really only taken off in the last... 10 or so? Here's a pretty good write-up found right here on this site that'll make for some good light reading if you're interested: https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...-for-Beginners.