Has anyone noticed that super black pastel, super blackhead, even some of the dark skinned combos… have very soft skin and over all a softer body texture? Like even the “fat layer” and muscle tone is just much softer as opposed to a normal that can be very muscular hard. The skin (scales) softer more flexible and silk like. What exactly could be going on since it’s not just the color? I kinda like it. Just curious if others have noticed this.
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I’ve realized reading this that I don’t have any of those type snakes in my collection, so I’m excited to see if someone else will chime in and agree with your statement on how they feel! It sounds very bizarre to me, but also highly intriguing!
I have a very dark simple blackhead and I have not noticed any different feel of his skin. But my guy may not fall into the category that you are speaking of…. But it’s interesting!
I’ll go feel up some of my dark snakes when I get home and see if I can tell a difference…but….what you really need to do is have people (or yourself) touch them while blindfolded and see if they feel different. Also make sure they’re age matched since hatchlings/babies tend to feel softer
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I went and poked a couple of the kids. . .
My super cinny right now feels super smooth and soft. But I feel like it’s a flawed judgement because he just shed out 3 days ago. XD
He’s at his most fresh and smooth right now. Lol
A couple of my others do feel tougher than him… The closest is possibly the dark normal girl I have. But everyone is at different points in shed cycles so I feel like my s. Cinny cheated.
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it’s not that subtle, but i will definitely do that since i fully believe blind taste tests. maybe will take video clips after i get a good sampling. Also tonight during my checks I’m going to check all my single black pastels and blackheads and try and score them hard to soft.
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I would think that double cinny might show same thing, please do check after a few weeks. To me its like a soft supple feeling, silky, but even under the skin in the fat and muscle.
just did a mini examination. mixture of males and females although the softest 2 are males.
super black pastel is definitely the softest (all black)
next is a BP+BH+GHI (mostly black)
next is super black head
then about half softness are an assortment
multiple Black pastel some +other morphs, ghi+mojave++, super BP+super vanilla(silver), some ivories ivories(go figure).
showing just slightly more softness was cinnamon ++ other morphs tho, only 2 examples.
as a side note I noticed most all my snakes with anything BP in it I have labeled “caution aggressive eater”. Another BP coincidence? Snakes would get this label if they consistently lunge at me as soon as I open the bin and are super quick to hunt & eat.
some that look like they might be soft but are not are banana, pied, albino.
also worth noting that I don’t have any other dark snakes to compare if its lots of pigment causing this. However I do have a dark calico that seemed softer than normal. Everything else I have is medium or light colored. Except for half the ivories maybe being slightly softer it seems the darker the snake the softer. (omg i just went back and looked and sure enough one of the softer ivories has black pastel in it).
I had something similar with one I bought that was sold as a normal wild type (didn’t look it though). It was very smooth and soft to the touch.
It just felt very very different to any ball python I had known.
I suspected at the time it was growth rate that caused the difference, I also thought it could be an unknown morph with a scales difference. but still have no idea what it was that caused it.
I know there is not much to see with pictures, but every body that felt it agreed it was unusually soft and smooth.
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