Would start a new thread but Trojan is so uncommon. I wanted to ask you since you might know the gene a little bit. can you tell a Trojan from a loco pastel? They look so similar in a lot of ways. Pastels are so varied in color and pattern from one to another. I picked up this surrendered ball python with no information. Looks pastel to me. Was going to sell it. But I saw yours and looked up others. Wow they’re pretty valuable, wouldn’t sell it if I had one.
With single gene Trojans still being around $1500+ it is extremely unlikely that someone would surrender one… But, you never know though with this crazy world
I think this is one of those “if you hear hoofbeats, think horse, not zebra” scenarios. Sure it’s technically possible for you to have a trojan but very very unlikely.
I would suggest going to the Morph Market store. Filter traits so you only see Normal Ball Pythons. Then sort them by oldest birth. Depending of the inventory at the moment you’re likely to see a dozen snakes you think have a mutation that have been many times to be nothing but normals. A lot of my heterozygous for recessive females would not pass for wild types either.
So many people being new to ball pythons don’t realize how much the wild type varies and how cool a lot of wild type animals look. Or even just heterozygous for recessive animals.
That snake looks like a normal with a busy pattern to me.
I agree with you there is a huge variance in normal ball pythons. I would say 95% of dinkers don’t pan out. But snakes het for recessive genes will not show any visual signs so the hets will have a normal appearance too.!
If you don’t feel like that you probably shouldn’t have snakes! Lol
Some people might say I have a gambling problem…
The problem is you end up with a bunch of dinkers and then produce a bunch of normals lol. Dinker projects can be fun but 95% of them turn out to be just plain normals. But it is possible so it is like gambling exactly because the odds are always stacked against you!!! As long as you know that if that’s what you enjoy go for it!!!
Trojans are an interesting morph in that it comes across kind of subtly especially in photos where it can’t fully capture the colors.
This one is my first and only Trojan so far. It’s been great to see how he’s changed as he grows. They tend to have a nice bright gold orange color when young. Then the blushing on the head and body start to turn rusty red-orange. Now this guy’s gold colors are turning a more muted gold and the reds are turning more like coffee and cream color. I really like how this morph ages and seems to avoid graying out pretty well so far.
This video shows an adult Trojan from one of the first breeders to work with the gene. Starting at 5:15 you can also see it next to an adult normal (het scaleless head) for contrast. You can see the trojan kept a lot more color than the normal. I think it’s a beautiful look and I’m hopeful it will prove to be an amazing color enhancer gene for a lot of morphs!
Overall Trojan ball pythons are not very wide spread yet, so it’s pretty much slim to none that you have a Trojan unknowingly. But that is definitely a nice looking snake, but I don’t think I could guess much beyond a light normal with some good blushing without the breeding history.
Yeah I can definitely understand that. Thank you very much! I took a picture of her with a normal and a normal looking dinker boy I have that looks a little like the striped import in that video. I’m probably always going to have a little dinker project going because I find it fun. For size reference the big girl is 1300 g.