How do you know...?

[STORMS]

Hey all! Since I know how much ya'll like answering questions for newbies... I got another one for ya.

I read all these threads talking about morphs ... How can you tell what's what? I really want to learn, bit I guess I just don't get it. Maybe I don't have enuff brains cells left to hold all the required info .

I'm almost positive I have 2 normals - just by the price I paid at the reptile show. I saw some BPs that cost as much as my car!!!!!

So, anywho... Spider? Cinnamon? Mojave? How can you tell? Is it their markings? And whats a Het?

[Freakie_frog]

Here check this out

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/ner...ollection.html

And a Het means it carries one half of the genetic code needed to produce a visual mutation

[STORMS]

Here check this out

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/ner...ollection.html

And a Het means it carries one half of the genetic code needed to produce a visual mutation

Holy crap!!! I didn't realize that there are so many different kinds of BPs! OMG!

Thanks for the reply - I'm gonna bookmark that!

[STORMS]

And a Het means it carries one half of the genetic code needed to produce a visual mutation

One more thing...

Is it possible for my normals to be Het? Or this is probably something the breeder would have told me at the show?

ahhhh!!!! So many questions!

[starmom]

Anything is possible~ though perhaps not probable. HOWEVER, if you look through the pictures on this forum, you will see amazingly gorgeous normal-type royal pythons. Just beautiful!! Do you have pictures of yours??? We love pictures!!!

[Freakie_frog]

It is something they would have told you at the show. However I Know more than one breeder that will sell poss hets as normals just to get rid of them. Thats how Adam Produced the second Albino Pin in the world by sheer dumb luck. So is it possible Yea is it probable no

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Holy crap!!! I didn't realize that there are so many different kinds of BPs! OMG!

There are even more than that, they are just not all listed

[STORMS]

Do you have pictures of yours??? We love pictures!!!

I did upload some of the baby (not the best quality cuz my camera is old) - how do I post them here???

[kc261]

So, anywho... Spider? Cinnamon? Mojave? How can you tell? Is it their markings? And whats a Het?

Different morphs are recognized by their color and/or pattern. Spider is (mostly) a pattern morph, meaning it has the usual colors of a normal BP, but the pattern is different. A really easy pattern morph to start to understand it, is the genetic stripe. Although apparently there can be striped snakes that aren't genetic, but it gives you the idea what is meant by pattern.

Cinnamon and Mojave are (mostly) color morphs. The most obvious color morph is the albino. The pattern on a albino BP is exactly the same as on a normal, with the alien heads and all that, but the color is very different.

Some morphs, like albino, are super easy to recognize. Many of them are more subtle, but become easy to recognize by looking at lots of pictures and seeing snakes in person at reptiles shows and such. It just takes time to learn them all.

Het is short for heterozygous. It is a genetic term. You probably know that genes come in pairs. Het means that in a particular pair of genes, there are 2 different ones. For example, one is normal and one is the gene for albino. In talking about BPs, people usually use het to mean a snake is het for one of the recessive traits, and the result is that the snake appears normal, but carries the genetics to produce that recessive trait.

Technically, a mojave (and many other BP morphs) is het. If a snake had 2 mojave genes, it wouldn't appear mojave anymore, it appears leucistic. But usually BP people won't use the term het when talking about co-dom morphs.

[soy.lor.n]

but you have a morph in your avatar

I would also recommend the sticky threads here: http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/f...splay.php?f=64
The Hunters guide explains how you can tell the different types apart. So what to look for when looking at different kinds of snakes.
I know I was TOTALLY lost when I first started posting here a month or so ago, but now I can recognize most of the more common morphs. So you'll get there!