I have Alterna x Zonota hybrids and that cross is viable into the second generation at least. Uniquely, the hatch rates are great, and babies feed and thrive more readily than either species does on it’s own. The cross definitely changes the growth inhibition of both species as well. The hybrids get nearly twice the size and do it much faster.
I’m with @t_h_wyman in that unless you caught it or can trace it’s safer to assume all your corns, kings, and milks aren’t pure.
To date, the only morphs that I know have been crossed into balls are Jag from carpet and Goldenchild from retics. And those hybrids are radically different enough that it would be really hard to pass them off as being non-hybrids
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At the moment, no. As groups like Ben’s and Hannah’s get a more detailed catalog of mutations in different species it will become possible, assuming the mutations are non-identical
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This is the ‘Ship of Theseus’ philosophical question - at what point do you decide enough of the “hybrid” DNA is gone to call the animal “pure”
Technically, as long as the mutant gene (dominant or recessive) is still there, then you know absolutely there is “foreign” DNA and so the animal is not “pure”. That said, if 1,499,999,900 bases of that animal originate with the original species and 100 bases are “foreign”, does it matter?
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It was happening back then. A lot of it was “hush hush” but an equal amount was people were breeding what they thought were pure corns only to have taxonomy catch up to them years later and show they were different species. Same thing that happened with chondros
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Mostly, no. That said, size disparity potentially plays an issue when there is a physiological size/mass discrepancy between the species, e.g., a female retic bred by a male ball should have no issue with eggs that contain larger babies due to the retic genetic size but flip the equation around and a female ball bred by a male retic is likely going to have issues
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I would dispute the claim that it is only recently that this has been happening. Old school herpers were some of the worst offenders with secretly ‘importing’ genes from other species. The “Albino alterna” and “Albino thayeri” are perfect examples of this
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Forgot about those (inevitable because there are too many to keep track of in this old brain)
Also remembered last night that there is the “SuperAngryBall” which is “AngryBall”/Borneo
No dispute, you’re absolutely correct in that many of the old school folks did a lot of sneaky stuff which came to light later. But not all of them. I still trust that the lines I got from certain people (Kathy Love for example) which were represented as “pure” actually were. But I’m years from being bent out of shape about it. There’s too much hybrid blood floating around in the corn snake gene pool to assume purity of any individual.
Frankly, I’m not even sure that corns which I find myself, just hanging out in the wild, are pure. Intergrades occur naturally, which is one thing. Sadly, too many pets have entered wild populations through either escapes, or unethical/uninformed humans releasing them, or God help us all, through unintentional “releases” caused by events like hurricanes.
So I’ve given up on finding a truly “pure” corn snake. Doesn’t stop me from loving them.
That is a Bateater crossed with a Goldenchild retic. They were just trying to be silly and goofy saying it was a ball retic cross.
Incorrect. The animal that everyone refers to as the Ball-Tic is actually from a Bateater X Goldenchild Retic. So technically it is a 75% Jungle GC.
I suppose there is also a math side to this. So while hybrid “corns” existed 30 years ago they hadn’t yet had time to spread their genes across the majority of the captive population. While I might love to see some cool mutations from other species in ball pythons I think once that genie is out in the population it would just be a matter of time before ball pythons would be just like the current captive corn situation.
I’ve often wondered if monsoon and leopard in ball pythons could turn out to be the same mutations as granite and labyrinth in Burmese pythons. I suppose even IF they happen to be at the same location the odds are against the exact same mutation in two different species. Maybe as more ball python mutations are located someone will have time to look at the same locations in other specie’s similar looking mutations.
Spot on. That’s why I felt pretty confident that the corns I bought in the early 2000s who were represented as having no hybrid genes were what I was told.
Yep.
Definitely was not trying to say all of them did it, just that it was not uncommon 
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Exactly. This was exactly the point I was trying to get across
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Absolutely valid. However, between any random CBB corn and any random WC corn, I would feel more comfortable believing that the wild one was pure simply because the rate of accidental hybridization in the wild is quite a fair bit lower. And also, there are some areas where there are no close species that would allow intergrade
It could be possible, I know that a kingsnakes albino and a corn snakes amel are compatible from experience. Albino cal king x amel corn only produced albino(amel) animals.
I would be less worried of this happening with balls. The prolific nature of external mutations in corns was able to happen in large part because the species that they originated in had a high degree of similarity in both phenotype and physiology to corns so the hybrids between them were not particularly unusual when viewed beside a normal corn.
With balls, there really is not another python that fits the “high degree of similarity in both phenotype and physiology”. The closest would probably be Angolans, and they have no known morphs. In fact, I would almost be more worried about a reverse situation where someone mischievously/maliciously bred a ball morph into Angolans and then spent a couple generations breeding the hybrid stock back to Angolans to the point were the 3rd/5th/whateverth generation looked so close to being pure Angolan as to fall within “normal variability” and then suddenly a “pure” Pied Angolan pops up. (This is exactly what was done with the “Albino alterna”)
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Possible. Same speculation has been argued for Spider in ball and Jag in Carpet and also the Ivory in balls and bloods. And I would add the leucistics across pretty much every species we see it in
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Depending on the nature of the mutation, sometimes chemistry dictates that they will indeed be absolutely the same. That said, there are lots of different ways to break a gene and get a similar phenotype while still being different on a genetic level. A great example of this would be Gravel and Asphalt in balls. Extremely similar in the single gene, compound heterozygous, and homozygous forms but genetically distinct from one another
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I am almost certain that will happen
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We see this in the Albino BurmBalls as well. I would put good money that the genetic nature of the mutation in each species being different however.
Not at all. Take a albinism for example. Albino corn x Albino king = albino jungle corn.
I think compatibility just maybe proves the same location/gene, not the exact same mutation. I read that they have identified two different albino and two different ultramel mutations in ball pythons but because they are compatible and apparently look pretty much the same we thought there was only one albino and one ultramel mutation. But since the exact mutation is slightly different for each pair I’m assuming they had to develop two separate tests for each. Or maybe just one test for the normal version of each? Maybe too many wild type alleles for that shortcut.
Correct
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Also correct
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Been a bit since I read the breakdown but if memory serves it is only one test for each morph
Think of the test working like this-
You have a sentence:
iamthegenethatgeneratesmelaninandmakeyouranimalhaveblackcolour
The test has two “primers” that are added in a reaction:
Forward primer iamtheg-
Reverse primer -kcolour
These primers bind to the start and end of the sentence and act to “xerox” the sentence over and over and then the end product is visualized on a gel
Now, when you have the mutations, they change what the sentence says:
Mutation 1:
iamthegenethveblackcolour
Mutation 2:
iamthegenethatgenerateouranimalhaveblackcolour
And as a result, when you “xerox” those, you end up with a different sized band And when you run it on the gel you can end up with different patterns:
I know this is how the Albino test is set up and I believe the Ultramel is the same. The YB complex is a much different test
EDIT - apparently we were posting at the same time
Do you have documentation of this?
Not that I doubt for one minute that NERD would once again be the source of flagrant misinformation. But I would like to have something to squarely point to when the conversation inevitably comes back around, especially if we generate a ‘Hybrid’ region to Morphpedia
I posted it directly from NERD stating its a Goldenchild Jungle Retic if you look above.
Which is why I added the “EDIT” note to the top of my last post (instead of just deleting it away)
I did not see the edit when i posted that. See it now though.
Thanks for clearing that up! @jk-reptiles
for years I thought the balltic was a fact! Gotta love the internet 
