I run AniLover, a reptile shop in Japan, and I’m also a ball python breeder. I wanted to document this clutch carefully because full scaleless female reproductive records have been difficult to find publicly.
In public discussions, including older threads on MorphMarket Community, full scaleless females have often been discussed as possibly infertile, or at least reproductively unproven. In the publicly available sources I personally checked, I was not able to find a documented fertile clutch from a full scaleless female.
Our full scaleless female, paired to a Bumblebee male, laid a 4-egg clutch. We photographed the female on the eggs, the clutch after separation, and early candling.
Early candling is already showing clear vein development in multiple eggs.
At minimum, this appears to document fertile eggs and early development from a full scaleless female.
Incubation is still ongoing, so I do not want to overstate the result yet. I will continue updating this thread through hatching.
おめでとう! That’s a great clutch for the documentation.
I have seen one other photo of a female on slugs with what looked like 1 fertile egg, but iirc it went bad not long after.
If these do go to full term, I would recommend doing an egg cutting for any potential full scaleless offspring. But it looks like it will be scaleless heads, so they should have egg teeth
I do still feel that the development of follicles and eggs is still very poor in scaleless ball pythons. Especially since this hasn’t been publicly posted this way in the given amount of time females have had to produce.
I’m looking forward to hearing if these eggs fully develop.
Thank you, I really appreciate the thoughtful comment. I understand your point, and I agree that publicly documented development from full scaleless females has been very limited. That is exactly why I felt this clutch was worth documenting carefully.
For now I’m trying to stay cautious and simply record what can be clearly shown. I’ll keep updating the thread as incubation progresses.
Of the four eggs laid over two separate days, one of the eggs laid on 5/3 hatched today. I also cut the remaining three eggs from 5/4, and all three babies are alive.
At this point, this clutch has now documented fertile eggs, continued development, and hatching from a full scaleless female.
Before posting this project, I personally checked the publicly available discussions and references I could find, and I was not able to find another documented case that had reached this point. Because of that, I believe this may be a very significant public record.
The female also resumed feeding one week after laying and has already returned to her original body condition.
The babies are still pre-feeding, and I will continue updating this thread as they progress.
That’s great to hear for Mom and the eggs! It is pretty crazy that this is the first clutch that I’ve seen posted go from being fertile to hatching from a scaleless female.
I still don’t think the gene itself is worth the risks, but there are still breeders that work with Desert or Caramel Albino
It’s possible that this animal came from a different bloodline, and the scaleless varieties in the US and EU have a hereditary fertility issue that’s also incomplete dominate? Though that’s all just a load of speculation.
Either way scaleless has that almost ugly-cute factor to me, similar to toadhead agamas.
