i have a beautiful capitive bred, male ball python. the other day, i noticed that his eyes were yellowish, not the normal black. i did some reading and found that yellow eyes usually mean that it is a 'jungle' patterned python. his pattern, while a little different than normal, is not completely a jungle. should i just assume that this bp carries the gene that causes 'jungle' even though he himself isn't one? if it's recessive, i understand that. but the problem is, how do i find out what kind of genes it has? the man i bought it from told me that it was an offspring that didn't have the color he was looking for, but he couldn't remember what the parents were. is the only way to tell what it is, is to mate it with a snake with known genetics and then do a square based on the offspring?
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unknown genetics
Replies (4)
You can breed it to a snake with known genetics. If your snake has that gene, then at least some of the offspring should be showing it. I don't know how the jungle gene works, but if it's recessive you would not be able to tell if your snake was heterozygous for it by looking at it. If it's codominant, that's a different story. Then again, it's possible you have a wierd snake with yellow eyes (which in itself.. might be genetic, you'd have to breed the snake and cross the offspring to find out). Complicated enough?
I'd breed that yellow-eyed snake to a wild type snake (one that looks like a typical specimen from Africa). And then see if the condition can be inherited. If the first generation of babies look wild type, then I'd mate them brother x sister to get the F2 generation and see if the yellow-eyed condition reappeared.
Paul Hollander
the only problem now is to find a female bp. i see lots of males offered, but very few females.
THe Jungle trait is not reproducable.......it just "pops" up every once in a while. The yellow eyes you mentioned happen alot in Royals......I have quite a few in my collection with similar eye coloring which ar enormal animals....they just have nice eyes..
Heres one with nice gold eyes........
Balls
