IBD in Ball Pyhtons

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IBD in ball pythons acts far faster than it does in boas. So when a BP gets IBD it tends to die fairly quickly(within a month or two) as opposed to a boa who can carry it for years possibly.

It is also relatively rare in BPs for that reason. It's difficult to spread from BP to BP when there's no contact, and because they tend to die fairly soon after infection, they don't harbor it from hatching until years later.

There is a piece of literature that suggests BP are more susceptible to the viral agent of IBD more so than boas. Indeed ball pythons displayed symptoms of IBD following an injection challenge after a period of ~2 months. That said, this time frame is likely an "ideal virus infection" scenario. By that, I mean that this is likely the fastest a ball python will display symptoms as the challenge involved purified virus and direct injection into cardiac tissue. Viral loads under 'real' infection conditions will inevitably be much lower. The assertion that pythons die quickly from IBD is likely an exaggeration of the more probable scenario that pythons are more likely to eventually succumb to the disease, instead of being an asymptomatic carrier for their foreseeable lifetime (boas).

Boa tissue (liver, lung, brain, etc.) and blood all show significant viral concentrations upon observation and tests for boas appear reasonably good on account of the systemic viral presence. Ball pythons indeed (in the study) tend to show more concentrated viral presence in neural tissue. That said, I had some correspondence with a professor at UF as well as he said they had success detecting arenaviruses in a variety of henophids, so the tests (PCR assay using a blood sample) does work in other species.