Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I think it's quite funny that there are SO MANY POSTS here asking the board if their normal looks "different" or could it be a "morph". The fact remains that there are no two ball pythons that look alike. A normal is a normal. Some are prettier than others and like the old saying goes, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

Yes, you may have lucked up and got a morph for the cost of a normal but 9 times out of 10, you simply have a normal.

I have to vent because these constant posts asking "Is my ball python different or could this be a morph" is making my stomach turn.

Remember one thing, the odds of a morph trinkling down to you through the supply chain, especially a visual morph are far and few. If it looks like a normal, smells like a normal, tastes like a normal then it's probably more likely chicken

Ta ta!

Yes, you may have lucked up and got a morph for the cost of a normal but 9 times out of 10, you simply have a normal.

Ha ha, more like 9,999 time out of 10,000!!

I agree.

But even at 1 in 10,000 there should still be about 150 out of the 150,000 exported from Africa each year (the last number I heard).

People marvel at the diversity of morphs in ball pythons but I think it comes down to a small percent of a huge number. They have now probably captive hatched about a million wild bred eggs in Africa since they got the idea in the 90's. I suppose it helps that ball pythons don't spend a lot of time above ground during the day so there likely isn't as much selection pressure against bright morphs as in a diurnal species. The latest craze is to try to find a subtle het for a more stunning co dominant (examples: Mojave, yellow belly, cinnamon). Sure most of the ones posted will not turn out to be anything but if some do it's still just a few out of tens of thousands of ch each year that don’t get posted.

er, that should read 15 and not 150 for a 1 in 10,000 rate off slipped through morphs out of 150,000 ch per year. Still, 15 pet store morphs a year might even be a little on the low side.

talked to a person who brought in 20,000 balls this year.....

he got 2 yellowbellies and 1 ghost ? I think it was?.....(mojave comes to mind but I think it was ghost).....

....that's 3 good snakes from 20000.......

so....if you get 1000 balls....you're odds still suck.....

......got 12 today.....wow..no luck ..all normal females........LOL

........oh...his words....."I think the pickers over there have there stuff together more than people over here at picking this stuff out".....

so it gets taken out before they ever go to a holding person over there.......(before wharehouses).....

yep.......

........$3 balls usually equal $3.........
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I think the hope is that one can find something new that they don't know to look for. Cool that he was able to find what appeared to be 3 known morphs that they missed but perhaps there where also a few new subtle co-dominants that your acquaintance even missed that will hopefully be bred and proved down the road. Of course it's a gamble and you can't keep and breed them all. I’ve picked up 5 interesting pet store girls over the years. I’ll be lucky if even one of them proves het for something more interesting but I’m willing to give it a try with females.

Your real world example of 3 known morphs out of 20,000 ch is actually 50% higher than Jeff Favelle's estimate of 1 in 10,000. If that rate carried across the entire ch crop each year it would work out to 22 known morphs slipping out with ch shipments world wide.

Thousands of people don't post pics of their animals here, perhaps a few that do got one of those 22.

I don't know the full details but I get the idea that perhaps two of the het leucistics where normal looking enough that they where not cherry picked before export. Apparently, breeders thought they looked interesting enough to try line breeding and discovered the much more stunning homozygous. I'm not sure if either ever actually ended up in a pet store before being discovered and for all I know they may have been picked out in Africa and exported at a premium price. Anyone have the full story on the original fireballs and lemons or for that matter mojave? I bet none of them where originally sold for anywhere near what the more stunning Platinum was imported for.

I think there are lots of odd-looking pet store animals that are worth betting pet store prices on. Most probably aren’t worth much more though.

Exact words from BHB enterprises. Brian said you will get a couple YB's & maybe a Ghost out of 20,000 Balls imported that are mixed in with the normals.

Like you said, there are probably alot of other animals that are het or actual visible hets that will soon be figured out, and start to demand higher prices.
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Chad Bachman

Sorry I have a newbie question about the morphs. My boyfriend and I are researching the potential of breeding ball pythons and I was wondering if I have a clutch is it obvious the day they hatch what they are morph or normal?? I have been reading where some snakes change the color as they shed but does that really constitute a morph or just shade change. Sorry for asking this but I just wasn’t sure.
-Abby

Yes, once they come out the egg you will know if you have something. You will have times like when or if you breed het to het (100%) you will get 25% normals 50% "morph" and 25% het and you won't know which are the normals and which are the hets visually.

Jason

I thought Het x Het resulted in 25% Normal, 25% Morph, and 50% Heterozygous. Did you just type too fast, or am I wrong?

Chris
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"I don't know about you...but I find comfort in that." -- Cowboy

haha your right, i didn't take time to read what I wrote! Thanks for the fix

Jason

I see this all the time on the snake forums. Personally, I follow one simple rule, if you have to ask then your chances are not good. Even if you do have an abbarant 'wild' pet store acquired morph, you won't know if it's a true genetic morph until you start line breeding. So why do so many people ask? I guess they want to feel like they have something special. Silly billies, all these critters are special in their own way.

A pet store in my town has a 50% PH for pied in their store. One of the clerks, figuring out that I know maybe one or two things about BPs, asked me "If it's 50% wouldn't it show up as looking a little different?" So, I explained what "50% het pied" actually meant, and why he probably was never going to be able to sell it here in this town. The clerks couldn't even tell me if it was male or female! With pet store help like that, sometimes it is no surprise that a newer person who isn't familiar with morphs would ask. How that pet store got their hands on a 50% PH is beyond me, especially since I ended up repeating the explanation for the owner...

but until you reproduce it, you really can't call it a morph based just on it's looks.

Also, if you didn't know it was a morph in the first place, why did you buy it thinking it was? Did you think the seller was so stupid that they didn't know it was a morph either? That they didn't know what they have, even though they are in the business of selling animals? That they wanted to sell a valuable animal for normal prices?

A good or different looking animal, whose characteristics can't be reproduced in it's offspring, can never be a morph. It's just an individual with a different look to it.

Rodney

,am i one of "those" that "turned your stomach",or no.I posted this recently enough to think so.

http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=646976,646976

Out of the 26 balls i currently care for,she is different in color.However,it stands to reason that twenty six is not a large enough number to see all the natural variable colors and patterns.

Which brings us right back to why i posted her pic.
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Charles Glaspie

Than people want to get pissed off when you tell the it's just a normal...LOL. Some of the funniest/irritating people in the world post Q's here.
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Chad Bachman