As the first python morph, the market for albino Burmese pythons and their hets followed a pattern that we have now seen followed by many ball python morphs.

By the 1992 hurricane Burmese breeders may still have been able to get a little extra selling hets as normals to pet stores rather than having to sell as normals to wholesalers. At any rate, it sounds like you are finding surprisingly large numbers of imported normals. I can just start to understand why. Even if they only made $10 each on those 900 imported babies they where probably enough cheaper than captive bred that the wholesaler could hope to make that $9,000.

1. I still think there maybe something to those 900 being from a more cold savvy location than the apparently mostly Thai morph lines. Maybe even only a pure northern locality type has the instincts needed to survive in the Everglades.

2. You've also presented a good theory that the roots of the Everglades population might go back before 1992 and even before morphs.

3. There is also the theory that captive adults don't make the transition well and large numbers of babies must be released for a breeding population to survive predication and the learning curve to recognize the alien concept of cold and how to avoid it. Was there any documentation on the genetic outliers on what time of year they where caught? Sure it’s arguable if there actually are any intentional captive releases but if there are do they make it through even one winter and breed?

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