Reptile & Amphibian Forums

n/p

If anything I would say a partial banded. Probably not genetic. Otherwise just a nice normal.
Take a look here, it may help.

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/ball_gallery.html

I've always understood a "jungle" to be another term for "noraml" or "wild morph"
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1.1 Ball Python, 0.1 motley amel corn, 1.0 western hognose

I have a moderately banded female that has tended to produce some banded babies so I'm thinking there is some genetics to it. Maybe some day I'll save a good-banded son out of her and breed back to see if I can get a really nice banded one.

Here is a page on some classic jungle like balls I produced a few years ago. I'm still leaning toward incubator problems being the cause since no one has reproduced these consistently but I am trying to breed the male to an unrelated normal this year just in case he has some interesting genetics. Not sure if he is big enough though but I’ll step up his feeding and next year will send him off on loan for a similar looking girl.
2002 Classic Jungle clutch page

Here's a picture of a male I bought from Stefan Broghammer at Daytona in 2002. In his book, and when I asked him about this appearance, he called them "tiger / banded", but as a descriptive term, not as a morph or fixed mutation. In his book "Ball Pythons" he says "these animals are apparently more abundant in certain regions as some export traders succeed in incubating similar young whereas others fail to do so," which would make sense with traders having assigned areas to obtain their snakes from. He also states "We do not know yet how this disposition is inherited, but it seems to be intermediary." You can't really argue with that, can you?
In this photo, which I just took after reading this thread, the male is in shed and pretty dark. Also, he's been off food a bit, not unusual for this time of year, but he looks worse than he should. I'm also posting the female.

Here is an older pic of the female I got at the same time as the male. From time to time I've seen ads showing ball pythons with this same look. There also used to be someone who advertised "Bengal Balls" (that's what I remember them being called, not 100% certain) that were this same appearance but more regular banding and beautiful high contrast. They may still be around, I just don't recall seeing the ad for a couple of years.
It makes sense to me that this would be an heritable trait that "blends", isn't just simple recessive, and may be common, or predominate, in a geographic area. So if these two breed together they would produce offspring very similar to them both, perhaps even more exaggerated. But bred to more normal appearing balls the banding would be diluted or lost.
Whether or not that's the case, I do like this look alot, and for a hobbyist, that's what it comes down to, isn't it?

n/p

I see lots of banded & jungle Balls, but 99% of them are just normal variations. With all the people paying top $$ for Balls, any slight pattern variation will get a crazy name. Unless you could prove it out, they should be called cool looking normal Balls.

Just my opinion,
Chad