solitary ball python lays eggs

[recycling goddess]

do female balls lay eggs when they are that old?

what's the norm?

[engywook]

I did a quick search and can't find anything about parthenogenesis in Balls; however, there was a parhtenogenetic Burmese python at Artis Zoo in Australia in 2003. She produced (fertile) eggs for several years in a row, even though she hadn't been with a male; genetic tests confirmed that the offspring were, in fact, fatherless. The surprising part is that all of the offspring were female -- the expectation was that they would have all been males. [This is because in snakes the female is the heterogametic sex (in humans, males (XY) are heterogametic and females (XX) are homogametic. The eggs double their DNA during parthenogenesis, so it would be expected that the resulting embryos would be homogametic (male); since they weren't, the DNA doubling must have happened in the egg-precursor cells, which is quite unusual. (I realize that explanation wasn't brilliant; if anyone is actually interested, I can explain in more detail.)]

I'm really curious to know if these are fertile eggs or not...please let us know.

[Ginevive]

Wow, this is wild; if the eggs turn out to be fertile, that would be completely awesome. So how did they candle for you?