Posted by:
hattie
at Tue Jan 23 19:10:18 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by hattie ]
"Parthenogenesis" is asexual reproduction... 
I had an interesting situation occur and I'd like to share the story with fellow forum members. Here's the story:
I have female ball python, who is currently 17 years old. I've had her in my possession, as a pet snake, since she was a tiny hatchling. She has always been housed by herself and I have NEVER had another ball python and she has never been in contact with another one.
When she was 11 years old, I discovered a clutch of eggs in her enclosure. They were in her hide box on the warmer end, and they looked as though she had been incubating them. Unfortunately, since I had no idea that she might lay any eggs and was not keeping a close eye on her, I found them after I noticed a peculiar smell coming from her cage, and the eggs had either died (if they were indeed fertile!) or were infertile to begin with. There were about a dozen eggs in there. I didn't think at the time to get any photos 
At the time, my reptile resources were very limited and I did not inquire further about the incident. I just figured that if birds could lay eggs spontaneously, so could reptiles. However, I recently have been bringing up the subject with a few reptile breeders, etc, and no one had ever heard of a ball python doing this.
My question to you is this: Have you ever had this happen or heard of this happening? Do you think that if I had caught the eggs in time and moved them to an appropriate environment that there might be babies?
Just an interesting topic to bring forward, and I'd love to hear your view points!
Heather
[ Hide Replies ]
 Parthenogenesis in Ball Pythons? - hattie, Tue Jan 23 19:10:18 2007
|
