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I was given some very malnourished ball pythons a little over a year ago. I was told that they were supposed to be 66% possible het for albino from Ben Siegle Reptiles. I managed to get them back on track health wise. This was a 2.2 group. I bred them and got 5 perfect eggs from one pair and 7 perfect eggs from the other pair. Last week when the eggs hatched, I quickly took a peak inside each egg to see if there were any albinos. There were none. I was contemplating whether or not to sell the adults and their babies in a group sale or what. The babies started to leave the eggs and when the fourth baby came out, I noticed several white sections and spots on the snake. When I reached in and took it out, I was amazed. It has somewhat normal body coloration except for the white sections on the body and the white spots on its back and the head is lighter with one side of the face showing some of the white. There is bright yellow around the white that resembles albino pattern. I have seen albino paradoxs where the snake is albino with bands of color, but this snake seems to be the opposite. And it is also tiger stripped down the sides as are a couple of the siblings. I think I might need to hold on to this little prize and the sibs and producing adults for a while! Has anyone else ever seen anything that sounds like this?

Here is a picture of a Burmese Python "reverse paradox". Is this what your Ball looks like?! Post a pic please!!

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T. West
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That is not a very clear pic but sure looks like a calico burm.

Several people have produced het albinos that have some "patches" or "spots" of albino like pigment. How can there be a "reverse albino paradox"? Basically that is saying it is a normal with some odd pigment. How can a normal be any kind of paradox? That doesn't make sense. If it has dark pigmented eyes it is not any kind of albino. I have a ball python with pied like patches of white in several spots of it's body but it isn't a pied. It just happens.

I use quotes because no one really knows, think that a paradox is some kind of chimera. If that is the case then it doesn't matter what color the eyes are. If the reproductive organs came from the albino in this blending then it is an albino for all intents and purposes when breeding. The amount of albino coloring vs. normal coloring would be random and there would be no such thing as a "reverse paradox" just a high albino or low albino paradox. All of that is however dependant on whether or not the "experts" are correct on this one. With out some kind of gene mapping it is all just conjecture.
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A week on vacation before going to New Orleans.
A bunch of white kids get shot and he's there the next day.

ide really love to see some pictures of what you're talking about!!!!! Soundsreally cool whatever it is OR isnt.

Not sure if this is what your talking about, but they are sometimes refered to as "Paradox Albinos" They can have different degrees of "Normal Pattern" mixed in with the Albino pattern, On this one it shows Black eyes, I have seen in Boas where One eye is Red, and the Other is Normal colored...

www.ballpython.com/morph.php?morph=paradox
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Executive Reptiles
Amanda Kingsbury & David Kendrick
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"How can it be a "reverse paradox albino?" Well, let's break it down. "Paradox" by definition is: a pattern that differs from the preconceived expectation. So an albino snake that should be totally void of pigmentation meets that definition when bands of pigmented color are present. Now what is the reverse or opposite of that? A snake that has normal color with patches or bands of albino pattern. This snake doesn't have orange eyes or black. They are lighter colored especially towards the top.
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I am not sure how microscopic pics need to be to be posted in the forum, but the one I tried to post didn't show up. So if any one is interested in pics, email me at duggincl@aol.com and I will gladly send some to you.

The first animals that I saw that looked like normal ball pythons with albino areas of pigment were in fact het albinos. I have seen a few people produce what you are describing.

If you think of it as a mutation, then you see the whole picture. Here a mutation is a birth defect.

Just like caramel albinos are prone to kinked spines, spiders are to equilibrium problems, the first albino balls had terrible fertility, some lines of some mutations eat much more poorly than others, etc., etc. They are negative mutations to the ball python that has to live in the wild. The bright colors do not help them survive. And people that buy ball pythons in Africa or collect them there will tell you that most of the established mutations in captivity came from isolated population that were inbred in a small area. What are the odds that unrelated hets run into each other in the wild?

So in captivity they are line bred and inbred generation after generation. Most people buy pairs of het albinos from the same breeder, from the same clutch and most albinos originated from relatively few animals. We all also hold back animals we produce to breed with the animals that produced them. So the gene pool is a thin one. The fact that you are seeing albino coloration on normal pigmented ball pythons is likely a negative result of all the inbreeding and deterioration of the genetic structure of the pigment being visible. There have been "paradox" animals of many ball morphs and none have proven to be intentionally reproducable.

This is a picture of a ball I have had a few years. It is a normal pigmented ball python with patches all over it's body of white scales that look just like pieds and patches of black pigment that looks like spilled ink like what you see on "paradox" animals. They are randomly dispersed all over his body. I have bred him and proved it to not be a dominant or recessive trait. It just is.

Yep. I have been breeding snakes for almost 15 years. I've seen my share of freaks and weird happenings. I don't think these were siblings. I chose which snakes to pair up with which snakes based on color and pattern. The females were much larger than the males originally and they came from Ben Seigel. He is a wholesaler, so he buys these things in the many hundreds to thousands a year. Me happening up on siblings would be a long shot. The banded pattern and lighter coloration carried over from the parents. They also had lighter colored eyes. So that carried over as well. This is not just white patches though, it actually looks like albino patches. Where there is white, there is very bright yellow, not like the golden color we see on brightly colored balls or pastels, but yellow and white pattern like you see on an albino. I think I'll keep that pair and hook them up again next year. I'll also hold back some of these babies. I'll see what it turns out to be. I've been sent a number of pictures, but know one has shown me anything like this yet.
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You can definitely tell if it's an albino paradox by it's offspring - breed it to a normal albino - if you get all albinos - then it's an albino paradox - if you get anything that looks like normals or hets then it's a het unless you get no albinos at all then it may just be a normal with an anomaly.

Lots a good dinkin projects out there - good luck!
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Tosha
JET Pythons