Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone working with these beautiful snakes? Think a IMG Spider could be amazing?

This girl shed clear when I got her at about 700 grams as a reported import (so I don't know if she hatched normal and changed in one shed like many IMG types).

As she aged she got darker with more yellow pigment and stopped shedding clear. I've got about two more weeks to go on her first eggs bred to a pastel het ghost. I'm not terribly optimistic about her chances of being genetic as I've not heard of other IMG types proving but we should keep trying on the chance of finding a genetic line.

I have a female that is identical to the one you posted Randy.. What are the "markers" of a "IMG" and what does "IMG" stand for?

Increasing Melanin Gene, which might be a misnomer if it turns out that it's not genetic (i.e. no "gene".

Also, I might be applying IMG too widely. It might have originally been coined to cover something different than the "changers" seen more recently. An interesting (perhaps only to me) side note is that the original “ghost” ball pythons where not the same thing we call ghost now. I believe the same applies to the original “caramel”. In each case the name was coined for a specific animal that either took a long time to reproduce or didn’t prove genetic and in the mean time another similar line took over the name. Some complain about new names for each new line but you can also get confusion using the same name without proven compatibility.

These "changers" seem to start out normal looking and then lose all yellow pigment in a single shed for unknown reasons (at least to me) making a very striking axanthic looking animal. I'm not clear on if it's common for them to shed clear for a while after this transformation or not. Perhaps the clear shed or not thing could be an indicator of two different situations I'm lumping together but should be kept separate. But over time they seem to get more normal looking as far as yellow but at the same time darker (again, maybe some of the changers don't get darker and shouldn't be lumped with IMG). Some I think get much darker than mine. One of the things I've noticed about mine now (6 years after I bought her) is that her lower sides have a sort of glow to them like she is in shed even when she isn't. Again, I don't know how universal this is and since I don't know what mine started out like I don't even know if she is a changer as I suspect.

So, post some pictures and tell us about yours. How did she start out? Any eggs?

Well here's the girl I was talking about earlier.. The pics aren't as good of a example as I would have liked. When I first got her, her colors were dark the she turned WAYY lighter colored almost grey but seems like she has darkened up alot again in the past few months.. She breed my pastel and yellowbelly males this past season but never ovulated. I believe my males were just a little bit too young to get the job done then. I have no idea what she looked like as a hatchling I received her about 2 years ago from someone who owned a petstore that went out of business. I believe he received her as a adult and had her a few years. She eats off and on great.. Let me know what you think.. I consider her a normal but am curious to see what her offspring will look like someday. I feel like she may have a little extra something.

Good luck getting lots of eggs out of her next year. I'll post whatever mine come out as but not expecting anything from her side. Of course I'll have to hold onto a male to breed back to her just in case it is genetic and recessive.