It’s always interesting to look at these two siblings in comparison to one another. To me it shows off just how variable normals can be. These are holdbacks from a double recessive project (albino x orange ghost). I chose to keep both to see how they influence the next generation. It would be interesting to see breeding projects built off of the wild phenotypes of ball pythons since they can all be so different.
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You are right! The natural variation in ball pythons is crazy! Probably also a reason why we have so many morphs. I also suspect though that yours may also have a het. Influence, (especially the first one)in that carrying the recessive gene may slightly influence the pattern or color. Some people don’t really agree, but if you look at some hets. You can notice sometimes different things in a snake, more then just tracks of a het pied marker, the whole snake may have bands or stretched alien heads or the last third may be super connected, subtle things like that. To me I think these differences are more then just natural variation, in some cases.
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I’ve been telling people for years that we’re doing the hobby a huge disservice by not working with nice lines of wild type phenotypes. I think a lot of the reason we have so many dark, ugly-looking normals in captivity is because we breed solely for morph. But a nice line of, say, brightly-colored normals, or reduced pattern normals - that could have an awesome impact on morphs as well. I have heard a few breeders say that based on their observation, a high-quality normal line is the best base for high-quality genes as well.
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I agree. You can say the same of the morphs too. I realize that everyone must start somewhere and that the poor quality morphs are often cheap and thus appealing to new folks, but it really does the morph a disservice when you see things like muddy pastels, pieds, etc. People need to focus more on having good and solid genetic foundations before they start breeding.
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Yeah, I chose the “busier” of the two because of how well I think it will influence the patterns when I bring black pastel into the project. The “brighter” of the two just really stuck out as a nice phenotype.