Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi everyone i have a question for you all. i work at a vets office and about a month ago a lady brought a ball python for a check up. i was only able to see if after peeking through the door and it was huge! the vet just said it was overweight and the owners had said it was a male. i honestly thought otherwise. well the next day we get a call from the lady saying it laid eggs. i was like..huh? so they put me to talk to her on the phone and it was never bred. is it common for a female to lay infertile eggs? i know birds do this but i didn't know snakes can as well. she asked me if i knew if it was going to incubate them or abandon them. i told her i can't say for sure because an animal will do what it thinks is best. i told her she can take the eggs, freeze them then toss them out or see if she'll leave them on her own. was that the right thing to say to her? i figured theres not much you can do. just thought it was it was interesting and i've been wondering ever since.
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1.0 arg. b/w tegu
1.1 het pieds
0.1 southern painted turtle
0.1 crested gecko
0.1 hogg island boa
1.0 burmese python

I remember hearing about this a few times on here. I believe there was one person that the eggs hatched. I would say that was good advise to give her. If you search around on here you could probably find the threads. If you find out anything about how the eggs are and what she decided let us know. I would think it would be ok to call her to find out what she did.

Most likely they are infertile but she could candle them and look for veins. There was a Burmese python in a Zoo in Europe that would lay eggs that had little clones of herself. So it's possible they could be good by parthenogenesis and it would be interesting to document this in ball pythons. If the humidity and temp can be maintained mom can incubate just fine but if she lives in a drafty screen top aquarium that would be difficult. But first thing is to candle with a good bright flashlight in the dark and find out if they are even alive to start with.

I read the article on that Burmese as well. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons they were so excited about her clutch hatching was because it had both males and females. Since sex chromosomes in snakes are Heterozygous for female (ZW) and Homozygous for male (ZZ) she was able to produce both male and female copies of herself when her gametes recombined into both sexes.
It would be very fascinating to find out Ball Pythons could do this too since the mechanism that triggers parthenogenesis is still not clear.
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3.4 ball pythons
1.1 kingsnakes
0.1 crazy cat
?!.?! ASFs
1.0 husband

This is a very interesting topic. I had read abouth that Burmese python, but am not aware of the same thing happening with ball pythons...it would be worth trying to find out if they are frtile and then trying to incubate them
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Neutiquam erro. Hostes alienigeni me abduxerunt.

hey everyone. i really appreciate all the replies. very insightful as i did not know about that burm. this had happened about a month and a half ago. when i spoke the owner on the phone she said she had it for years and it has never seen a male. she thought it was a male so thats why she was so shocked. unfortunately i was doing lab work so i wasnt in on the consultation. if not i would have said something. now i wonder if theyll let me call her to see what the results where. she wasnt the easiest owner to speak with so i helped as much as i could but it wasnt what she wanted to hear. ill ask my vet this weekend if we can do a follow up call. that would be interesting if we can find out if ball pythons can lay fertile eggs without a male. parthenogenesis has been proven in komodos..why not another reptile? i will keep you all updated. thanks for your time.
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0.1 arg. b/w tegu
1.1 het pieds
0.1 southern painted turtle
0.1 crested gecko
1.0 hogg island boa
0.1 burmese python

I have a king that layed slugs without ever having been with a male. I have since successfully bread her and got good hatchlings.

I have also seen a rattle snake that gave birth to a clone of its self. She had never been with a male either.

This seems to happen with a lot of dif reptiles.
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1 BP
4 Cal Kings 3 alb 1 het
3 Alb Corn
1 Rev Alb Nelsons