Transcription
Now, speaking of controversy, I think that the last animal here on the list is going to be the most controversial one. Every breeder knows that there are some genes in the ball python breeding world that are not just unwanted, but are actively avoided. So, for this week's video, we are going to dive into those genes that I think are avoided for specific projects, specifically at the high-end side of the ball python breeding industry. My name is Steven with Leviathan and let's get to it.
A couple years back, there was a stat that I thought was really interesting and it was that when it comes to Morph Market and all of the breeders going in searching for specific genes and specific combinations, the most commonly excluded trait was pastel. And with this, I think that it is really, really interesting because objectively pastel is a really cool morph. It brightens the animal and it brings in a lot of yellows. It changes the pattern. It is an incredible mutation. But why exactly is it excluded more than any other trait when it comes to the ball python breeding industry?
And in my opinion, there's a couple different factors on this one. One, when pastel is put in clown, as an adult, it ages pretty much terribly. So, as babies, they look really cool, really bright, and they have an interesting pattern on them. But as adults, they essentially look like a brown snake with almost no pattern left on them. So, I think that because clown for pretty much the last several years has been the king of the ball python breeding world when it comes to combos and pastel doesn't work very well with clown. I think that this was a massive factor on why so many people excluded pastel from their searches.
In addition, pastel is an incomplete dominant mutation. So because it's incomplete dominant and you can go for the super pastels, I think that this is another reason why people tend to avoid pastel. Pastel is a very common morph and oftentimes the animals that contain pastel are cheaper. So that means that when people are starting off in their ball python breeding operation, they're often buying animals with pastel in them already. But when it comes time for them to purchase more animals down the road, whether it's males or females, they generally don't want to go for the super pastels because they know if they hit a super pastel, all of the babies that it's going to have are going to carry the pastel gene. And a lot of times breeders want more variety than that.
In addition, there are a lot of combos that look significantly better without pastel. So, generally speaking, if people are willing to buy a pastel animal, it's about a 50/50 shot on whether or not they are buying that pastel animal in order to get the other genes and then breed pastel out. So because of this, I think that while people are willing to buy some pastel animals, they definitely don't want to get pastel on both the male and female side of a pairing in most cases because again, they don't want to have to worry about getting those super pastels, even though they are still beautiful animals, but due to the breeding limitations of those super pastels later on.
Now, with these limitations said, there are some projects that work really, really well with pastel. And in my opinion, the best projects to have pastel in are puzzle, desert ghost, and axanthic. All of these combinations, whether it is a pastel puzzle, a pastel desert ghost, a pastel axanthic, look so much better than the combo without pastel in it. So, I do think that there is a place, but again, because of the factors of the super pastel, I think that people are willing to pick up pastel in these combos without it being a big deal. But they are still trying to avoid those super pastels down the road because they don't want to be limited. But there are some projects beyond just clown that I think that pastel is an absolute no-go and you should do everything you can to avoid pastel in those. And the biggest one in my opinion is Monsoon. Monsoon has an incredibly intricate pattern, but when you put pastel in it, it blushes it out so much that it almost wipes away all of the contrast and you barely get a faint ghost of what the monsoon pattern was. And ultimately, I think that monsoon looks significantly better without pastel in it. And because of this, it creates a situation where a lot of people don't want to buy pastel monsoons because they know that half of the clutch is going to have that gene that they don't really want in the project.
Gene number two is one that came out a long time ago and it is such an incredible mutation on its own, but when you put it in combos, it can be rather limiting and that is pinstripe. So, pinstripe on its own, absolutely incredible mutation and it looks so significantly different than a normal ball python that I think that it is obvious why it was so popular about two decades back. But at this point in time, the ball python breeding world isn't about just reproducing a single mutation from the wild. And instead, it is about creating these incredibly intricate combinations of genes to create combos that are beautiful, amazing, and unlike anything else that has ever been seen before. And it's that last part, unlike anything else that has ever been seen before, that I think has the biggest drawback when it comes to pinstripe. Pinstripe is a very, very strong mutation, and it is incredibly dominant. It is not uncommon that when you have a pinstriped combo with other genes in it, you can barely tell what the other genes are. And because it's overwhelming the combos so much at the high-end side of the ball python breeding world, people tend to want to avoid having pinstripe in those combos because they are afraid that if they hit an amazing combination of genes, they're not actually going to know what it looks like and it's not going to look that much different than just a pinstripe. So, for this reason, I don't think that there's anything wrong with pinstripe. And I think that it can do really, really well at the pet level side, but it is a morph that I would avoid in pretty much all of the high-end breeding projects except for maybe Pied because Pied with pinstripe increases the pattern rather than reducing it. And this can create some more opportunities to continue working other genes in the Pied project.
The third gene that I want to talk about actually is three different genes that are all somewhat related and I'm going to group them together because they all share the exact same reason why I don't think they are particularly good for the high-end side of the ball python breeding world and that is the lethal genes in the spider complex. So when I say the lethal genes I mean genes like spider itself, hidden gene, wma, and champagne. And the reason why I'm calling them the lethal genes is because if you have the homozygous form of any one of these genes, it ends up resulting in a baby that is unable to thrive and it either dies in the egg or it dies very shortly thereafter. So, the reason why I don't think that these are genes that you want to put into your high-end side of the ball python breeding world is that the spider complex itself is probably one of the most popular set of genes that people like to work at the high-end side of the ball python breeding world. Genes like spotnose and cypress and bongo and chocolate and wookie and things like this. And if you have one of these lethal combinations that are potentially going to go into these high-end genes, like let's say a spider combo or a champagne combo, all of the other breeders know that if they bought that animal, they cannot pair it to a spotnose. They cannot pair it to a bongo. They cannot pair it to a cypress. Otherwise, there is a chance that the babies that they produce from it will not be viable. And because of this, even though these morphs are absolutely beautiful, it really limits their ability to work in the rest of the high-end side of the ball python breeding world. And in general, most breeders avoid these three genes pretty much across the board when it comes to their high-end ball python breeding projects.
Gene number four is another group of genes and they are the bell complex genes. Now, this one's a little tricky because I do think that there are some bell complex genes that are 1,000% critical to some of the high-end combinations, specifically special. But overall, when we're looking at the more common bell complex genes like butter, lesser, mahave, things like this, I think that these are avoided at the high-end side. Not because they don't make incredibly beautiful animals, but if you accidentally create an all-white snake by pairing two bell complex gene parents together, it can essentially wipe away any achievement that you would have made, even if you hit that absolute dream combo, but it looks exactly like any other bell. So because of this again it's kind of like pastel where people will have bell complex genes in these high-end animals but because you have to be very careful about your pairings when you are working them it limits the ability to use these animals in everything else. So oftentimes people if they're going to buy bell complex animals on the high-end side they tend to be more often females and if they are a male it has to be a really really good male with the exact right genes in order to fit into their collection. But this means that you have a smaller viable market who will be willing to purchase these animals on the high-end side. So oftentimes they're going to sit longer and when you do end up selling them, they might be going for prices that are lower than what they would have if they didn't have those genes to begin with.
In addition to the bell complex genes, you have yellow belly as well as the fire complex, specifically fire itself, that fall into this exact same trap where again, it's not saying that people are not willing to buy high-end animals with yellow belly or fire or one of the bell genes into it. But it does make it a little bit trickier in order to work those projects and work those animals into their ball python breeding strategy if they already have animals that have those bell complex genes, those black-eyed lucy complex genes or the yellow belly complex genes. Unless the yellow belly complex genes are stuff like gravel, asphalt, things like that.
Gene number five that I think most people avoid when it comes to the high-end side of the ball python breeding world is albino. Specifically, the regular normal T-negative albino. And the reason why is that albino completely removes the melanin in the animals. And this can be really really limiting when you're trying to work other combos in the future because it is actually the pigment in the melanin that are in the animals that we are manipulating through the other genes in order to create different patterns in order to create different colors. And when you have a fully albino animal, it essentially eliminates an entire axis that we would have used in order to create those absolutely beautiful amazing animals. Now, there are some pros to albino, and that is that they age absolutely perfectly. If you look at a baby albino and an adult albino, it is probably the best aging animal in the entire ball python breeding world, except for maybe a bell. And this is better than desert ghost. It's better than lace. It's better than literally anything because it looks exactly the same as a baby to an adult. But again, it's not necessarily that the animal itself is beautiful, though that is a huge aspect of the ball python breeding world. It is also the ability to continue making beautiful animals that are completely different and unlike anything else that has ever been seen before. But essentially, once you get the visual albino animal, all of the albino combos look very, very similar and they're not that different than again just the normal albino. And for this reason, I think it's a gene that most people avoid at the high end side of the ball python breeding world. Now, that said, if you do like the albino appearance and you want to work stuff at the high-end side of the ball python breeding world, there are lots of other options that still have a lot of value and a lot of potential at the high-end side, like lavender albino for another T-negative, rainbow, and then on the T-positive albino sides, things like monarch and ultramill are absolutely amazing for the high-end side of ball python breeding combos. And animals with these genes are all the time going for really, really good prices and that breeders really, really want them.
Gene number six that I think that people should avoid when they're getting into the high-end side of the ball python breeding world is scaleless. And the reason why is that the fully scaleless animal is essentially an animal that can't really thrive well on its own and instead it requires a lot of additional care. And oftentimes these animals don't live that long. And even if they do live, there has never been a confirmed case where a fully scaleless female has produced their own clutch of eggs. Again, I've heard rumors here and there, but I have never seen a picture in the entire time that I've been in the ball python breeding world of a fully scaleless female on her own clutch of eggs. So because of this it means that half of the in result babies the fully scaleless females are essentially going to be unable to breed and if you can't produce offspring from them it is going to be very very difficult to work that project long term and in a lot of situations people will see that an animal is scaleless head and they will completely avoid the animal altogether because they don't want to have a situation where it pops up later down the road and they unintentionally end up creating a fully scaleless animal. So, for this reason, I think that if you're getting into the ball python breeding world and you have aims on that high end, completely avoid scaleless. And at this point in time, with the state of the ball python breeding world, I don't even think that this take is that controversial.
Now, speaking of controversy, I think that the last animal here on the list is going to be the most controversial one. And I think that a morph that it hurts my heart to say, but you might want to be very, very careful about if you are going to be aiming for the high-end side of the ball python breeding world is Pied. And the reason why is that pides are beautiful animals. They have gotten so many people into the ball python breeding industry, but a lot of times once you add in two or maybe three other genes into Pied, it looks essentially the same as all of the other combinations. In addition, there's also a random variability of the amount of pattern in a Pied. And it is very possible that you can spend a decade of your life working a triple or quad recessive Pied project, finally hit the goal animal, and it has a little teeny tiny splotch of color and the rest of the animal is white. And because of this, I think that a lot of people essentially avoid Pied at the high-end side of the ball python breeding world. Now, this isn't to say that there are not some amazing high-end Pied combos out there, but if you're getting in right now, I think that there is less runway in the Pied project compared to something like the Clown Project, the Puzzle Project, the Tristripe Project, the Zebra Project if you're looking at those pattern type mutations. So, because of this, again, it doesn't mean that every single Pied animal is worthless. There are some incredible pied animals and I would absolutely love to make something like an ultramale sunset pied down the road. But again, if you're getting into the ball python breeding world, this is one that I would avoid from the high-end side. But maybe if you really like it, use this to create those pet level animals that get other people excited about ball pythons, and you can help grow the hobby yourself.
Anyways, we hope you guys enjoyed the video and if you did, please don't forget to hit the like button, leave a comment, and subscribe. But my name is Steven with Leviathan and we will see you next week.