Hi there! We are newer to the morph community and need a little help identifying this guy. We got him from Petco and he was listed as an “assorted fancy ball python”. We know he is pied but didn’t know what else he could be.
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If he has anything else it may or may not be leopard as I sort of see some leopard as patterning. But then again pied’s are notorious for funky patterns like stripes and smiley faces and I do see the classic pied double stripe so he very well might just be a pied and nothing else. If you really REALLY want to know you can send in some shed to MorphMarket and get him tested for genes to see if he has anything else. Obviously if he’s het for something there is no way of visually seeing that so you would find that out as well. Coming from Petco he’s probably a rescue that originally came from an expo so it’s likely he’s at least het for one or two other recessive genes.
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Thank you so much! His patterning was what threw us off because it’s not like our basic we have. I will definitely look into sending some shed in!
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Petco animals are not rescues, they are purchased from companies like the Gourmet Rodent (Mike had the contract last I checked). If they take in a rescue they cannot represent it as being anything but a rescue and can only be sold at a substantially reduced price.
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We got this guy for $125
I’m honestly not sure then. If he wasn’t labeled as a rescue then he probably wasn’t. However I know my Petco sells regular pastels as “assorted fancy ball pythons” for around $250 which is double what you paid. Especially for a pied, I rarely ever see anything at Petco for a normal price like that. They sell regular balls for $115 at mine.
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99.9% this animal is just a Pied. There is a huge amount of natural variation that easily explains any small “differences” you think you are seeing It might have some het genes but you would need to test breed or send in a shed to know that for sure
As Don noted, BigBox pet stores are buying wholesale from a handful of major breeders that are mass producing cheap, popular morphs. They are not going to be selling off any significant multi-gene combos
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If an animal doesn’t sell for a certain amount of time, the lower the price to half off for a “short period of time” aka until the animal is sold
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Hi! Fancy isn’t a ball python morph, and I believe you’ve got yourself a just a nice normal pied!
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