Are ball pythons a domesticated species?

[Ssthisto]

Pet does not equal domestic. Many wild animals are kept as pets. I would not consider canaries domestic unless they were signifgantly different than wild canaries.

Canaries have been selectively bred since the 1600s - for song ability, for posture, for colouration, for feather structure. More crucially, the domestic canary has been designated its own subspecies.

The point I am trying to make is that they can not survive on anything but a wild diet. Ball Pythons eat rodents in the wild and we provide them with rodents in captivity. Cats eat rodents in the wild and we feed them kibble in captivity. When your Ball Python willingly eats a mouse substitute I will concede that its domestic.

Snake steak sausages? That's a "mouse substitute" and doesn't even have any rodent content! If I could source them I would certainly have a go at feeding them to my royals, though I would not feed it as an exclusive diet... any more than I would feed my cats exclusively on kibble.

For that matter, I would argue that the diet we provide them now is a "substitute" for their actual diet - they don't see Mus musculus or Rattus norvegicus in the wild, they're eating Praomys natalensis and other AFRICAN rodents. I know from keeping all three rodent species that Natal rats do not look like domestic mice or rats, they do not behave like domestic mice or rats, they do not move like domestic mice or rats, they do not smell like domestic mice or rats and they almost certainly don't taste like them either (not that I have a basis for comparison - I haven't tried eating any of the three.)

Your severely confusing what I said.
Selective breeding is not domesticating over two generations to get a green canary that is only genetically different through a few generations, where it is physically identical.

Canaries are four hundred years into domestication. A lot more than four generations. The greens are the ones that tend to have been selectively bred for song ability - the best singers were chosen instead of picking the ones with weird feathers or the ones with weird postures or the ones with odd colouring.

[quote]If an animal will come to the door to greet you with excitement for reasons other than food and water, I think that is important in domestication as well.[quote]
Do battery hens greet their owner?
What about range-bred, range-fed, range-reared cattle?

They're both domesticated species but they are quite often frightened of humans.

I don't think there are any 'domesticated hamsters', because most of them are identical to their wild ancestors. Generations with mice are a bit different because they breed at such an incredibly fast rate, they can be altered easier through selective breeding.
However, I don't think anyone can show me a 'mini mouse with curly hair' or a mouse that isn't the same as a field mouse with a different color.
Colors do not change the breed of animal, which is domestication in my book.

Actually, wild Syrian hamsters do not look exactly like the selectively bred odd-coloured, very large animals humans have bred in several different coat types (including long haired angoras, curly rexes, hairless and satin-coated).

I could certainly show you curly-haired mice - rex and double rex. I could also show you long-coats that look like hamsters with long tails, satin-coats that are metallic and shiny and even texels (Satin longcoat rex). Hairless? Yup. And the English show mouse (particularly the pink-eyed white) is double the size of your average wild Mus musculus - and has been type bred for very large ears, a long tail and a specific body shape.

Same goes for rats - rex, hairless and satin coats; wildtype top-eared or the odd ear set of a dumbo, dozens of colour combinations, even animals that have been bred for taillessness.

As I said, royal pythons are on their way to being domesticated and already fit quite a few of the criteria - and they won't be considered truly domesticated until there are no more wild stocks being brought in - once they've been bred exclusively in captivity for a few generations they may well be assigned a new subspecies name - Python regius familiaris, anyone?