I have been looking for a Volta female. Someone reached out and said they had a 2 yr old Volta female weighing 2800 grams. And sent pictures of the parents. But I can’t really tell if that’s Volta. To me (the inexperienced morph identifier) it looks like a regular pastel. And the parent definitely has some genes going on. Any opinions?
This is the Volta girl
This is the parents
Lots of red flags here
First, and most importantly, “Volta” is not a morph, it is a locality. You cannot identify it by looking at the animal, you have to trust that the seller has proper lineage information
The animal in the first picture, that you are saying is being called a “Volta” is a Lesser
The alleged parents look to be a Pastel Spotnose and a Calico Pastel. Neither of these alleged parent animals are carrying the Lesser gene, ergo, there is no way they can be the parents of the animal in the first picture
All this taken together tells me that you are likely walking in into a scam. I would run, not walk, from this seller
I think @t_h_wyman basically hit the nail on the head with his answer.
Red flags galore, run away and don’t look back.
Seconding everything above. This feels like a Facebook scam. The mismatched genetics… And bedding?
There’s far too many people prowling and stealing photos for those scams. If anything you can always try reverse searching images too. Sometimes you’ll get a hit off the actual breeder.
Edit: if this is a transaction from here I’d report the account as well
Adding another comment just to note, if you are searching for a true “Volta” region animal, I’d definitely look for reliable, reputable breeders that can provide some form of evidence of where the animal comes from. Just because it’s a large female will not mean it’s gotta be a volta. I’ve got a 3.2kg female cinnamon, but as far as I’m aware she isn’t a Volta.
Just some food for thought, don’t get scammed because someone tries to sell you a big snake and claims it’s from the Volta region.
I believe this is also in Travis’s comment above, but just wanted to reiterate it again.
Everyone @t_h_wyman @armiyana @nswilkerson1 has answered you perfectly! I just wanted to add, the only 2 differences from the “Volta” locality that I have personally seen are: Head size, the Volta really seam to not just average bigger, but their head is wider to a similar sized regular ball python. As @nswilkerson1 pointed out there are a lot of large/heavy females so unless you can compare the heads of a Volta and similar sized female side by side this would be very hard to tell, even for seasoned hobbyists. The second “difference” is as subjective, it’s average clutch size. Voltas lay larger clutches. I have heard up to 20 eggs, but I’ve seen 16+ egg clutches from voltas. Regular ball pythons can range anywhere from 5-10 but I have had and seen some lay 12+ egg clutches. The main difference is voltas average more eggs per clutch, so you wouldn’t absolutely know unless you get multiple clutches from the said “Volta”
It’s such a shame that there are so many scammers these days. What happened to the words “ CONSCIENCE” and “HONESTY” ?
I suppose I am just old school…….
Definitely avoid this sale as others have said. I’ve been in the hobby coming up on a decade and I can count the # of traceable Voltas I’ve seen for sale within the hobby without taking my shoes off. That’s leaving aside outback obviously as Ian brings in a handful gravid ones most years.
People don’t always have bad intentions, they often just don’t know any better. I have a female with Volta lineage crossed to a line that was bred for large size, and I can say from experience that everyone who’s ended up with a baby tends to mislabel them as Voltas. On the feed card I clearly denote that offspring are only 25% Volta lineage, and by the time they finish reading it, they call it a Volta again 
As far as IDing them, they vary widely like any wildtype. A friend bought a gravid import from Ian and the babies were all over the board looks wise. They also weren’t as large as I would have expected. I suspect that’s because the Volta locality as we know it is just a population of genetically large BPs breeding within itself. It’s certainly not a ‘morph’ so no one can say what one should look like at any stage.
An adult female should have a large blocky head and be a whole order of magnitude larger than normal in structure. Note the width of the body.
My employee holding this female here is about 5’4”
That’s true, not everyone is out to scam due to lack of knowledge so I need to withdraw my comment for that reason.
On a lighter note! What a magnificent animal you have! Or maybe I should say “Showpiece”!
Oh I didn’t mean to imply that innocent ignorance was more likely to apply than an outright scam, the scammers abound these days 
Thank you! She’s a neat snake. Size aside, it’s turned out that her look is an incomplete dominant trait, and I’ve got a a half dozen or so in the holdback rack to see exactly what’s going on there.
No apologies needed! But I do agree with you!
I am blessed that my BPs are eating well. When that happens imho I tend to want more BPs because they are really growing on me. The possibilities are endless for them! My little boy is sooooooo sweet! My girl is a little nervous but she has calmed down a lot from the “I want to bite your face” attitude! lol
Please keep posting updated pictures because I really want to see how these guys turn out!!!
i would avoid these.I know a breeder on MorphMarket has a pair of Volta’s for sale ,orionated from a uk breeder i believe
It’s interesting how different BP locality info gets interpreted vs boas. There’s a lot of locality stuff in boas so it’s a little more understood, but even still we have similar stuff (Hypo Hog coming to mind) people sometimes misunderstand thinking a locality is just like a morph and can be bred as a single gene or something.
Also, I think there’s just as many scams as there’s always been, it’s just more visible these days as there’s a record since people feel more anonymous online etc. Where it used to be people were quiet both if they did get scammed or if they were attempting one lol
This has been speculated, but there is also some validity to the idea that the locality is more difficult to get to which means it has not been harvested as heavily which means that there is a more available population of older animals that have just been able to grow larger. And because the hunters over there see how crazy the breeders over here go for large female animals, they are very specifically targeting the largest ones they can find when they get out there.
In all my years, I can honestly say I have never seen a “monster” male Volta, which begs the question - If the the population there is genetically distinct as “giant”, then where are all the giant males?? 
Just some food for thought
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A word of caution here. Short of direct WC import animals, 99.999% of animals labled “Volta” are not full blood Volta. They are a product of breeding a Volta female to something that is the product of animals that have been in the hobby for generations. As such, that makes them 50% Volta at best.
I’m skeptical of the entire “volta” label. I have older females bigger than any volta I’ve seen and the founder female het Pied we started with at her peak was almost 8kg at 20 years old. Some people will tell you anything to get more of your money.
Makes perfect sense. I have breeders that are genetically big snakes, and others who are old enough to drive a car that are similarly large. From what I’ve seen, except for a couple, the only difference is how fast they achieve a large size.
I have a couple of females where the size of the head and the overall structure is clearly noticeable to me, but wouldn’t necessarily be obvious looking at them today if you didn’t raise them. Collecting them obviously creates a snapshot in time, so we have no way of knowing if they got that big in 3-4 years or 8-10+.
