Our original Wide Stripe Ball Python (Python regius)

This snake was previously held in the Pro Exotics collection, where I'd thought it was a very interesting animal. The snake was then either sold or traded to a Denver area collector sometime in 2001 or early 2002. At a local trade show in late summer of 2002, we acquired the snake in a cash purchase.

A phone call to Robyn at PE, revealed that they had bred the snake once. One neonate was described as being 'stripy' but not finding much of interest, they simply sold off all of these offspring.


We suspected the trait to be genetic, and began review of various websites and internet postings. All information we could find indicated that while many snakes with similar appearance were in US collections, nobody had reproduced them consistently or proven the mode of inheritance. Still, many of the snakes with similar appearance lacked the unusual side pattern of this specimen and we continued with the project.


While visiting a local pet store, we purchased this female Ball Python. This snake was a young adult virgin female that had been previously held as a pet. 

We did not own many Ball Pythons at the time, and all specimens in our collection were morphs which were already slated for other projects for the next few years. So we needed an extra female or two.


After just a few months of temperature cycling to ready the snakes for breeding, we introduced the pair.

Apparently, being held in the Pro Exotics collection for several years without breeding had gotten this guy more than a little pent up, as results were immediate!


The female produced a small clutch of four eggs, which incubated without difficulty as did our other Ball Python eggs that year. The eggs hatched, resulting in 2.2 fat little baby Ball Pythons, three rather normal looking snakes, and one which was a near duplicate of his father! This little snake was male and was retained along with the two normal looking females for future breeding. Having produced another of the Wide Striped snakes in the first generation, we now suspected we were working with a new incomplete dominant mutation.

Photos below are of the trio we retained, we neglected to keep a photo of the extra male.

Male #1 Wide-Stripe	Male #2 Normal	Female #1 Normal	Female #2 Normal

The female was slow to resume feeding and she failed to regain enough body weight for breeding in the 2004 season.

Fortunately, she went on a feeding spree later that year and gained more than enough weight for the 2005 season. We again bred her to the original Wide Striped male and received a fine clutch of seven eggs from her on 5/23/05. This clutch hatched on 7/20/05 but the results were less than we had hoped for. All seven snakes appeared completely normal, just typical Ball Pythons in every respect. Needless to say, we were starting to doubt the validity of the project at this point.

Photos below are of all seven snakes from this clutch.

E029-01M Normal	E029-02M Normal	E029-03M Normal
E029-01F Normal	E029-02F Normal	E029-03F Normal	E029-04F Normal

However, I had two things going for me that convinced me to continue. The first was my awareness of my own continual poor luck when working with hets and incomplete dominants. I can breed two het for albinos together for years and never get anything good from them. But sell them off, and the new owner will immediately hatch eight albinos in his first clutch, it's happened. I am just not Ralph Davis in this regard.

The second was that the Wide Striped male hatched in 2003 had fathered a clutch of six eggs with one of his sisters which was still incubating....

This clutch was laid on 6/29/05 and all six eggs hatched on 8/22/05. Of the six hatchlings, three or possibly four exhibited the wide-stripe appearance of the father!

Photos below are of all six snakes from this clutch.

E047-01M Wide Stripe	E047-01F Wide Stripe	E047-02F Wide Stripe	E047-03F Wide Stripe
E047-04F Wide Stripe	E047-05F Normal

The conclusion we have drawn from these breedings indicate that this morph is reproducible, in the fashion of other dominant & incomplete dominant morphs. The appearance of the Wide Stripe mutation in our 2003 clutch from a breeding between the original male and a normal female rules out a typical recessive mode of inheritance. The same breeding in 2005 produced no Wide Stripe snakes, and this is simply attributed to poor luck. Breeding of the 2003 Wide Stripe male to a sibling produced three, possibly four, Wide Striped morph out of six eggs.

Thus far (end of 2005 season), a total of five or perhaps six Wide Striped snakes have been produced out of seventeen hatchlings total, all using Wide Stripe males against normal females. We anticipate these results to move closer to the 50% ratio one predicts when breeding a incomplete dominant morph to a normal snake once additional numbers have been produced.

There appears to be some variation in quality of appearance of this morph, with occasional specimens exhibiting 'breaks' in the mid-dorsal striping. This is not surprising, in view of similar mutations in other species. We anticipate producing three clutches of these again in 2006, using Wide Stripe males against normal females (including two 2003 female siblings). It's unfortunate that females exhibiting the Wide Stripe appearance were not produced until 2005, delaying the possibility of seeing the first 'Super Wide Stripe' Ball Python until at least 2007.

As of the end of the 2006 season, several additional specimens have been produced from three clutches. The first clutch (F060) is from the original pair (same as the 2003 clutch and the first clutch from 2005), and again all are normal:

F060-01M Normal	F060-02M Normal	F060-03M Normal	F060-01F Normal
F060-02F Normal	F060-03F Normal???

A clutch was also produced from the Wide Striped male hatched in 2003 against one of his sisters. This is the second clutch from that pairing and the results were similar to the first clutch, with three snakes out of five exhibiting the Wide Stripe appearance. Around this time, we were made aware of another breeder working with a similar line. This breeder indicated that the ventral pattern in these snakes always consisted of a pair of thin dark crescents along the side of the ventrals, producing a pair of narrow thin stripes along the belly. Sure, enough ours have it too. As in our results, this breeder had decided the mutation to be dominant, but not yet proven or disproven incomplete dominant.

F091-01M Wide Stripe	F091-02M Normal???	F091-03M Wide Stripe	F091-01F Normal???
F091-02F Wide Stripe

The Wide Striped male hatched in 2003 was also placed with his smaller sister in 2006, but removed after just one or two introductions. This female had never been a strong feeder and it was felt she did not have sufficient size at 832 grams to breed. Yet sometime in late August, this female had been noticed hiding under her hide house for a couple of weeks and refusing food. While this was not terribly unusual for her, it eventually prompted a little investigating which revealed she was in fact tightly coiled around a clutch of eggs! As they had desiccated somewhat underneath, only the two top eggs hatched and one was a Wide-Stripe.

F092-01F Normal???	F092-02F Wide Stripe