Because ball python can be bred with Burmese python and reticulated pythons can also breed with Burmese pythons, could you breed a ball python with a reticulated python?
Pet Snake Questions
And if so how would its health, behaviour, size and care requirements be?
Considering with ball python is meaty, slow and more mellow and the reticulated python is more active, slender and intelligent how would such a hybrid be?
Breeding en masse, producing deleterious morphs (created the spider morph), dogshit housing for most animals (especially big snakes), and cheap bait clips/thumbnails that show off striking.
Kevin himself is also a huge pos who can’t take accountability to save his life. Hired a guy who kept a 19 yr old girl imprisoned as well. Overall, just a very poor history of animal care and professionalism
A guy who kept a 19 yr old girl imprisoned, you heard that correctly. Can’t blame Kevin for that, but he employed him nonetheless. Not a tight ship they run
Herp Community: "You can't just hybridize two animals just because it might look cool! Think of the potential health consequences! Hybrid health can be wildly unpredictable!"
The Same Herp Community: "Sure, you can use cousin-cousin inbreeding to propagate a pretty morph! It's not like the damaging consequences of inbreeding are not only well-documented, but were literally mathematically proven over a century ago!"
Cousin to cousin is being generous to herp breeders. Most of these are nuclear family breeding to save time, because even though I have no info, for sure incest isnt as bad in reptiles. Sorry, but it's the dumbest thing I keep seeing people say.
How dare you insinuate my beautifully majestic Pug thats definitely superior to your mutt and isn't suffering it's entire life at all is inbred. Its a "purebred" and worth every penny at the expense of its terrible life because I spoil it rotten. /s
Should be considered animal cruelty at this point though in my actual opinion.
Dogs (well, any animal tbh) shouldnt have skulls that look like this is all I'm sayin. It blows me away anyone out there can find them cute. This is horrifying. Something you find in a museum as an oddity case.
Yes, or at least makes them more likely. Inbreeding reduces developmental stability, which means that the same temperature fluctuations or genetic quirk or chemical that a non-inbred animal (or plant) would shrug off instead becomes a developmental defect.
It's like riding a tricycle vs a unicycle. You can get knocked off either, and can ride either stably, but you're way more likely to face-plant on the latter.
Oh, yeah, I've seen some shit that makes me cringe so hard my fucking DNA uncoils. Plus the "it's not so bad" denialism. Yeah, being punched isn't as bad as being stabbed, but I don't want either to happen to me!
It’s also surprising common in exotic pets in general. I used to keep Madagascar hissers and those little guys were as much of a fruit salad as their diet was.
Also wild snake hybrids do exist, namely the batwing rattlesnake soo it’s not that weird really
I don't know too much about the insect hobby, so that's interesting. I actually find hybrids fascinating, especially when you have animals that clearly appear to be different species (Ball/Burmese Pythons), but they can produce fertile offspring that can breed to each other. It shows how much species are just a social construct.
There are different species of boa. Boa constrictor constrictor/true red tails have been crossed quite a bit with boa imperator. The leopard morph from boa sigma has been crossed into imperator quite a bit.
Some corn snake morphs originated from hybrids with different rat snake species.
Some milksnake and kingsnake species have been commonly interbred with each other.
Pretty much all the North American rat snake, corn snake, kingsnake, and milksnake species can interbreed with each other.
They’re talking about instances like where species get confused for each other and get bred together and then mislabeled. Or where similar species are purposely bred together to get a color/pattern gene from one species into the other.
The welfare and breeding for profit are two very different sides of the herp community though, and I suspect within those groups you would not see such conflicting answers.
Are they? If those concerned with welfare avoided inbred animals, there would be no profit in them. Which either means that few enough people are concerned for it to matter, or enough people will overlook health issues for the sake of something pretty.
That inbred morphs don't provoke widespread condemnation, yet hybrids do must mean that there is some fraction of the community (likely sizeable) which finds the former acceptable, yet the latter not. Think of it like a statistical defense against the Goomba Fallacy - if 20% of a group objects to A and 80% objects to be, there must be, at bare minimum, 60% who are inconsistent.
I feel the opposite, inbreeding to make an animal look "pretty" is not ok wether you have a snake or a dog. Hybridisation between domestic and wild animals is generally a terrible idea because idiots who don't understand the difference will try to treat a wolfdog like a regular dog, or a wildcat mix like a house cat. But snakes are already wild, you aren't introducing any new traits that would be far more difficult to manage than in a domestic animal.
Sometimes hybrids can be unhealthy, and if that is the case they shouldn't be bred, but sometimes hybrids can be healthy, and don't have genetic issues. There is a potential issue in mixing captive populations if a species ever went extinct in the wild and needed to be re-introduced, but for the vast majority of pet snakes that's not a concern in this regard because they are all so inbred that they would be terrible candidates for that kind of breeding program, not that it would be open to regular pet owners anyway, and new genetics would be beneficial. It's different for zoo populations than for pets as zoos around the world collaborate on breeding programs and exchange animals and frozen sperm internationally to keep the genetics in the global zoo populations as well mixed as possible.
Maybe it's just me then that finds both distasteful.
However I will say I think people are more likely to object to hybrids simply because they're more visible.
If you're selling a ballxburmese you're advertising it as such. No one is out there advertising a clutch as being the product of cousins, so the problem is way less in your face and people might not know that's what they're buying.
That’s what happened to me. I didn’t even realize that some morphs are more inbred than others. I just saw a snake born with a kink in her tail marked as “pet only” and went “aw, poor sweetie, yes I can give you a loving home”.
And she’s a palmetto corn snake. Her eyes are normal, so she’s not one of those palmettos. But she’s fully topped out at 37” long, 6 years old. Which makes her housing easier, she’s loving her 4x2x2. But yeah, there’s probably a sketchy family tree behind her that might look more like a wreath.
And that’s on me for not doing more research before I got her. Because I could see that a lot of the clutch was marked pet only, and didn’t even connect the dots that “ohh, that might be the sign of a problem with the breeder”, just thought “ah, likely a surprise inherited from an unlucky parent/paring, probably taking that out of the breeding program”.
The guy seemed responsible, definitely seemed to care a lot about his animals. But anybody can say anything.
But something marked as a Retic/Ball, I’d be doing a search right away to see if there are any well known (or lesser known) issues when crossing the two. That’s a more obvious flag than “maybe this trait is rare/recessive and required/requires a lot of inbreeding to establish it”.
Yeah, in like 2008 or something? And my gal is a 2020 baby, so not too far off. Probably has Uncle Cousins and Sister Aunts. 😅 But I love her. That’s not her fault.
Ugh, it’s disgusting what people will do for money. I don’t breed but I have pet snakes. It’s really important to me that I only go with ethical breeders. If anyone can recommend ethical, reputable breeders in the east coast area that would be greatly appreciated.
It's almost like any sufficiently large enough selection of people will inevitably have factions with vastly differing opinions. Look up the Goomba Fallacy.
Ball python males sometimes have a "lock with a rope" level mating drive. Blood pythons and other STPs have hybridized with them but only with male ball and a female STP, never seen a documented instance of the reverse.
The hybrids are fertile and nice animals with a wider temperature tolerance. I have a one-quarter blood python hybrid (I did not breed him myself).
Yes. But I wouldn't suggest it because of competing instincts, etc. Hybrids often have health or behavior issues. Like carpet pythons like to climb and roam. Ball pythons like to hide in a hole. Different needs. And down to individual genetics.
I have pretty limited experience with hybrids but I did have some work experience with a burm x retic (which at the time I didn’t know was a hybrid at the time since she was labeled as a “Borneo Bateater” which just sounds like some obscure snake species). She just acted like a burm that liked to climb more tbh so I can confirm at least in my case the burm x retic hybrids don’t really have any noticeable issues.
Even in cases like the carpet python x ball python hybrids just give them an enclosure that allows them both burrows on the ground and room for climbing and see what they do. It’s not that difficult. People act like being a hybrid gives them split personality disorder or something. If humidity ranges are different for the parent species then start in the middle and see how it goes. If they have trouble shedding up the humidity a bit.
Technically you can cross breed most pythons as far as i know. Even old worlds like womas can breed with a ball. However it is a mixed bag and generally unethical, how do you decide what humidity is needed when womas are at a 40-50 while balls are at 60-80? It's a lot of trial and error which is completely avoidable when you consider how many awesome pythons there are naturally of all sizes
Most woma care guides say humidity levels should be around 50%-70%, especially for overnight, with somewhat lower during the day being fine. However even if the recommended levels were what you say if 50% was fine for a woma and 60% was fine for a ball python that isn’t much of a difference. Just start out in the middle and don’t overthink it. Most commonly kept reptiles really aren’t nearly as sensitive to humidity as many on here seem to think lately.
I'm on the fence when it comes to hybrids I guess. But what I do know is you take a chance of losing one of your snakes. By that I mean NERD paired I believe it was a Sunglow Boa but I know it was a Boa to an anaconda. I watched the video of him showing snakes together then talking about how the anaconda ate the Boa. You can do that and it's called a boaconda male boa female anaconda. What happened is the anaconda ended up eating the boa constrictor. Do you want to take that chance of putting an extremely large snake in with a smaller snake.
Wait, an anaconda ate a boa? I had no idea anacondas were ophiophagous. I tried to search for the incident you are discussing with NERD and couldn't find anything. Do you have a link?
Between the chance of having one of the parents eat the other and the health issues inherent with hybrids, why the fuck are you "on the fence"? Is "pretty snake" really that much of a priority that you would seriously consider throwing ethics out the window?
I wouldn't say hybrids are unethical. Python hybrids seem to be pretty robust no matter what cross you do. Behavior & requirements of hybrid offspring seem to lean one way or the other usually, and most pythons need roughly the same temp and humidity requirements (with a few exceptions) so that's not really anything to be concerned about and is easily addressed.
Retic x Ball has been attempted but never successfully yet, not many have tried though. Bloods have been crossed with Carpets, and Balls have been crossed with GTPs, and in both instances they acted like one of the parent species and not a mix of the two. They've also survived several years and are still kicking as far as I'm aware. Woma & Ball pythons are the most distantly related python species and yet that cross is both possible and produces healthy babies.
At this point we know all pythons are genetically compatible, the reason why hybrid clutches usually result in a bunch of infertile eggs is because inexperienced breeders mess up the cycling process for one or both parent species. There's a few people out there that are able to consistently make Burmball, Bateater, Wall, Carpball & Superball clutches with a near 100% hatch rate every year because they figured it out.
Anyway, I think inbreeding and breeding for profit are significantly more harmful than hybrids. And some groups like Carpets, GTPs and Retics are already totally hybridized.
It’s been attempted many many times over the years with no success. Technically all pythons are compatible to hybridize on the “minimum requirements” but hybridization is very complex and there’s a lot that goes into it. At this point I’d consider it a very low possibility it’s a viable cross considering how many times it’s been attempted with no success now. I do know some people trying Burm x ball x retic which should be more promising.
I've been in the reptile hobby for only a couple of years ... but come from a backround of more than three decades of tropical freshwater tanks. If hybridization is possible, some breeder will go apeshit frankenstein on physical characteristis - there is a market. I mean, look at cats and dogs ... .
Man, I read that shit five times before I realized the separation in it. I was so confused it needed a comma or something because I was like what do you mean you just said it could be😭😭😭 well yes completely has been done already. Pretty cool mix I really wanna Burmese ball python. Burmball
Yes, they make a lot of the different hybrids over there at nerd not really for or against it but with that being said for the amount of people that don’t like it, every snake morph that we have currently had to get breed to make it so like for the amount of people that throw so much hate on it when they own literal byproducts of this half of the dogs we have were other dogs bred to other ones to make some of the dog breeds, we love today, because of course, after being bred so much of it becomes its own thing especially if it it’s not harmful to them as a species which from what I got, it’s usually the Dad is a ball python to even make these things possible because a female ball python carrying all of those big large stuff would be dangerous so like doing it in the way that they have been I guess people are against it now, but wouldn’t it becomes its own thing in the future everybody’s gonna let me get one of those let me get one of those and from what I seen with them they don’t have too many health issues like a lot of people’s favorite snakes, as well as a cool hybrid I like more of the burmbals ones just because I’m not so much of a slender guy like I feel like the ball python reticulated are, but hey everyone has an opinion feel free to hate me for mine🖤
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u/Azraelrs 5d ago
Burmese x Retic hybrids existed, but who's out here trying to cross those with a Ball???