Quote Originally Posted by Alter-Echo View Post
makes me wonder why ball pythons mutate so much in the first place, compared to other reptile species the number of morphs is staggering.
Hard to know if that's even the case since we collect and breed 100x more ball pythons than any other species. Look at how many retic morphs exist relative to the small number of WC/CB animals. Even western diamondbacks, which are kept by maybe 100 people in this country, have 7-8 recessive morphs now.

I'd also ask the opposite question about crocodilians. We've captured and farmed literally millions of alligators and uncovered a grand total of 1 mutation. Nature's perfect predator, I guess.