Reptile & Amphibian Forums

why do you supposed there are so many morphs of ball pythons? are there genes some how unstable? is there something different going on in there environment to cause genes to change or what?
which brings me to another question...
are there actual populations pie-balds and pastels and clowns and mojaves (etc., etc.)living in the wild? or are there so many people collecting ball pythons from the wild that they find the morphs even though theres only one?

Actually a majority of the morphs have been found present in the wild, although not a population pertaining to one morph. Some of the morphs may depend on the location in africa where the ball python is found. With other species of animals in the world and when a small colony of this species gets seperate they evolve to compensate the environment (darwin and his finches). I know it seems like a lot of ball morphs out there, but it really isn't that much if you think about it like this. Think of morphs in balls as birth defects in humans both caused by so called "unstable genes". No take this concept and induce inbreeding to make sure that those genes stay unstable, now think of all the vast possiblities of what can occur when bred together. I think new ball morphs will continue to show up for some time (especially now that we are artifically simulating breeding that would probably never occur in the wild; albino spiders, pastel ghosts,etc.). The possibilities are endless. It is like looking into a crayon box, all those colors you see originated out of under 10 colors. Same for ball morphs, you mix and match to get what you want and hope the offspring are stable enough to be fertile.

I think it's mainly a numbers game. If we where collecting upwards of 150,000 wild bred animals of any other species we would probably see the same thing. I don't know the numbers for say green iguanas but suspect they have many more offspring in a year so not nearly as many different parents involved and probably not a different gene pool every year either.

Mikester,

As I'm sure you know, Ball Pythons are HEAVILY "farmed" in Africa (Togo, Ghana & Benin) This "farming" is not really farming at all... the African people collect adult females at the end of the breeding season and hold them until their eggs are laid. They incubate these eggs and meanwhile they free most of the adult females back to the wild.

Here is where things get crazy... when these females are released, they are not typically released in the same area that they were captured! Basically churning the "gene pool."

Think about it this way... if a 100% Het Pied female is roaming free in Ghana, breeding and living like royalty (no pun intended)... a normal male breeds her. She is captured, lays her eggs in a Ghanan facilty and is then set free again. If she is not set free in the same location and has the opportunity to lay eggs in the wild then you will have a female 100% Het Pied loose in an area that maybe Het. Pieds have not been in before giving birth to Possible Het babies.

Her babies will be exported to the USA and Europe as normals while truely being 50% Possible Het for Pied. Meanwhile back in Africa the mother is spreading her genes around in an area that she is not from!

It seems that more and more morphs are discovered as the "normal" Ball Python females are "relocated" after every year's hatch! So maybe the solution to MORE and MORE morphs is churning the genetic pot in the wild.

Just a theory that I have been thinking about for a while...

Any thoughts?!?
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Sean Bradley
Owner : EbN
www.ExoticsByNature.com
www.BallPythonMorphs.com
www.CornSnakeMorphs.com

that is an interesting thought. i dont have much to add to it but it is interesting. i think the gene would most likely be lost though. if she ended up laying in the wild, what are the odds that one of her offsrping that is a het would end up breeding to her again. but i do think that there would end up being a few unknown hets being exported from that.
btw...i bought a CH little girl from you before christmas...she doing great, thanks. maybe ill get lucky and shell be het for something jk.

As long as one of the hets from each or any of her litters survive and breed they will continue passing on the trait. I do not know the percentage of ball pythons that make it to adulthood, so it is possible that her entire clutch is killed off before they can pass on the trait, but I would assume over a few decade time frame, if the female has, lets say 10 clutches around 5 or 6 of the neos should make it to breeding size, and of that statistically 2 or 3 would be het, and they would be doing the same passing of the genetic trait, so eventually a locality group of ball pythons should result in a decent percentage of the animals carrying the trait. So her original locality should in theory have a percentage of hets and her new location should/will carry a percentage of hets.

Later
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Randall L Turner Jr.
www.aircapitalconstrictors.com

You never experience life until you have kids..then you realize what you should have done rather then what you did do

I know they claim to release the females and I think even some of the babies but I don't really believe much of that goes on. Maybe I'm just being way to skeptical but I'm thinking the combination of human nature and the dire economic situation in Africa would result in the adults being skinned or something.

I would love to know how much wild ball pythons move around on their own. Assuming that some of these mutations originally occurred long ago some of the genes might already be widely distributed.

I agree with your theory Sean, but I am also sure that a ~~~~~~ of morphs ARE hatched in the wild, but do not survive because of their colour - or lack of it! Normal Ball pythons have a colour and pattination which allows them to blend in with the natural habitat, and so evade their preditors; a Piebald, white or very brightly coloured BP would be less able to blend with the habitat and therefore be seen more easily and predated upon. If this is also correct, the chances of a morph surviving in the wild is very drastically reduced.

>>I agree with your theory Sean, but I am also sure that a ~~~~~~ of morphs ARE hatched in the wild, but do not survive because of their colour - or lack of it! Normal Ball pythons have a colour and pattination which allows them to blend in with the natural habitat, and so evade their preditors; a Piebald, white or very brightly coloured BP would be less able to blend with the habitat and therefore be seen more easily and predated upon. If this is also correct, the chances of a morph surviving in the wild is very drastically reduced.
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Rob Talkington

??

and pattern morphs. How many are we talking about as soooo many?
Consider the type of designer morphs that Kevin has created as the only likely animals not from nature.
There are pied,albino and lucy in mammals, birds and reptiles. Rare certainly,but there.
Patterns in rats and mice are reproduced through selective breeding the same as all other animals, including ball pythons.
Rarely will you see the same markings on cows or horses unless it is an isolated trait carrying animal, being bred for these traits.
Isolating the animals for the color or patterns and creating breeding colonies is what is making the animals appearant in our culture, that and the obvious financial drive in the hobby/bussiness. The Clark albino and the Kahl Piebald. Very succesful colonies with outbreeding hets for strengthened bloodlines have over a decade made pied hets and albinos financially realistic and relatively available to the public as well as the private breeder.
Now about the wild. The three countries where these animals come from naturally are third world countries and the residents use these natural resources(ball pythons) as food and hide.Along comes a western interest in captive keeping of these animals and what might be an obsene amount of money being offered for these animals and low and behold out of country interested brokers get involved and offer decent earnings for rare animals to the locals. So before killing these guys they sell them to the brokers, who in turn contact the professional breeders for their financial offerings.From the field to America.
Consider now this is about the month when most of the imported ball pyhons come into the country(US).People will be selling thousand and hundred lots of animals.Picked through for visable morphs, the rest sold in cheap lots. Some will post high yellow or looks like animals and ask more money for them. The nature of the currupt industry.
There is a person looking to sell a gravid burgundy for $700. How ethical is twice shipping a gravid animal in the winter and asking a low price for the animal. Clearly the animal is not a burgundy.Be careful of the ethically challenged.
Anyway, I dygress.The morph animals are not so that many until we get them. And honestly, some of the animals Kevin has come up with are true works of art.It is a great hbby with a fantastic return in the investment.