From what I have read online, and things I have sort of pieced together myself...
Scaleless in ball pythons is definitely not worth the trouble. If one is bred then yes, it should only be sold to someone understanding the issues at hand:
1: unlike scaleless corns/rats, ball pythons don't seem to have belly scales. This means even just locomotion is difficult for them.
2: heat pits can be undeveloped. This means more problematic feeders because they can't properly sense where the enticing food is.
3: lots of issues with the skin such as easy injury and shedding issues. I almost wonder if they develop that papery easy to tear open skin you see in extremely malnourished snakes and if so that is a major concern for large open wounds and bacterial infections.... The chance for bacterial and fungal infection is also increased by lack of protection the scales provide
4: something I noticed in an egg cutting video.... I think Scaleless may even mean NO EGG TOOTH. Without that special scale, they won't even be able to pip on their own. Leading to egg death unless properly 'cut' in the egg. In the video, the breeder had to cut the membrane around the snake as well as the egg while the other eggs had already pipped.
It's going to be debated for a while, but it looks like the demand will hopefully keep dropping. The community in general so far is seeing something unique and different, but breeders are starting to see the issues with them and steer away from breeding scales heads to get the scaleless.
Another thing we discussed here before is the fact that there are very little photos or evidence of adult scaleless. It feels a lot more than just, "he won't photograph well" because of some everyday issue these makes have with delicate skin.
I think even Brian B said that scaleless was a big challenge and he wasn't planning on producing another past one clutch this year? He wanted to try again and see if he could get the care and quality of life to be improved I think?
It's definitely more problematic than the potential issues that any other gene has except perhaps Desert. Not desert ghost, just desert. That particular gene has a flaw in the females that leads to complications and eggbinding and from what I hear this was a majority of the time.
At least some spiders, woman, champagnes and so on have very little to almost no visual wobble..
Chances for kinking in cinny and blk pastel supers or caramel albinos isn't guaranteed and sometimes few and far between
...
But scaleless is something that will absolutely result in a scaleless head to scaleless head breeding and something that needs to be considered more critically.
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