Thursday 3 January 2019

Pips Pet Post #2 - Sunny the Ball/Royal Python

Today is dedicated to Sunny, my largest/heaviest snake, although not longest. She's a 6 year old albino enchi ball python, and a total sweetheart. 

Albino enchi is her morph, and snake morphs depend on the genes the snake has, which determine colour and patterning in each individual. Certain genes cannot mix and can create animals with birth defects, or are "lethal combos" and the babies will never hatch/survive, others produce odd male/female ratios in the offspring. Ball pythons have arguably some of the most interesting and varied morph selections, with thousands of different morphs available through combinations of the base morphs, and breeders working on different projects are still now producing "worlds firsts" of different morphs. In general the more morphs a snake has (more genes) the higher the value, but some are undesirable because of some issues, commonly the spider gene. 

Sunny is an albino enchi, meaning her main morph is albino, but she also has enchi, which is what gives her her second shade of yellow in her patterning. An albino can only be produced by pairing 2 snakes that carry the albino gene, as it is a recessive gene. Meaning, sunny who is full albino could be paired with another full albino to produce definite albino morph hatchlings, or with a male that is het albino, with a chance of some of the eggs being albino hatchlings. That's the simplest terms, morphs can seem confusing at first but are extremely interesting to look into and see what great combination morphs can be produced, the chance and ratios of certain animals being produced by combining different morphs, etc. 




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