Reptile & Amphibian Forums

im looking into purchasing another ball. mine is about 4 or 5 years old now. he's a regular old ball, no morph. he's between 4 and 4.5ft. what im wondering is if i find one around the same size is it possible for me to house them together? would they take to each other or would it just be a problem? would the sex of the new ball make a difference? also, i'm particularly interested in finding a morph of some sort. not sure what kind yet, but would the new ball, being a morph, make a difference on the impact they'd have on each other if housed in the same tank?

In my experience, Balls are NOT social animals. Just this weekend I had two males get into a fight while they were being moved. Hissing, mounting each other, even some head smacking. Nasty business.

Another individual I know had two females housed together and one kept trying (we think) to smother the other. She was larger and always laying completely on the smaller female. I think in the wild this would be an effective mechanism to remove competition for food because the smaller female definitely would not have been able to hunt or strike while she was being sat on.

Males and females together tend to create constant stress on one another. The male may be constantly waiting for the female to be ready to breed, which could result in longer fasting and even moodiness. The female is going to be haunted by this male waiting to mate.

Perhaps other keepers have had more success keeping more than 1 BP in a cage, but I have not heard of it.
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25 year old 0.1 from Lincoln, NE
Ball Pythons - 0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.0 Woma (hidden gene?), 0.1 Yellowbelly, 2.1 Normals
Kingsnakes - 1.0 L. m. thayeri, 0.1 L. m. thayeri X L. alterna, 1.0 L. g. californiae
Other - 0.1 Whitesided P. catenifer sayi, 1.0 H. nascicus, ?.? Chrysemys picta, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband