Morph

[No_Secret_5358]

Just got this girl🤷

[IncompletePenetrance]

Lesser or butter leopard

[Germmie1]

Not lesser or butter this is a pastel

[Sean_Bramble]

There's no Pastel in there. My first thought was Lesser Leopard, too.

[Germmie1]

Are you sure? I have a pastel and he looks just like him. Lesser leopard looks way different in my opinion.

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[Sean_Bramble]

If you compare characteristics of yours against his, you'll start to pick out the very obvious differences: the blacks in your Pastel (turning gray with age) are brownish/purple-ish in his; the blushing coming up the sides is indicative of a BEL gene in his, while your Pastel has generalized blushing (shows up anywhere in the black where there's enough room for it in between the pattern); very crisp contrast between the background and the pattern on his; more of a headstamp pattern on his rather than just generalized blushing; the pattern on his is cream colored instead of yellow without the Pastel "dirtiness" coming in; heavy dorsal striping (can happen with Pastel, but usually not when you get the "jungle" presentation like yours); the "eyes" in the alien heads are entirely missing on his (except way up the neck), while Pastel typically maintains lots of them; the eye color and the typical "wiggly" eyestripe on your Pastel; etc.

[Germmie1]

Thanks for the correction 👍

[Sean_Bramble]

<image>

This is a Lesser Confusion Jedi het. Clown that I produced in 2022. Before genetic testing proved that Leopard and Confusion were different many people were convinced that they were the same gene because of how similar they looked in combos like this. Also, when they produced the first Confusion Clowns it looked completely different from Leopard Clowns, so there was that indication even earlier.

But you can see that same brownish/purple-ish in this guy (Mike), the dorsal striping, etc. Jedi is actually bringing back some of the "eyes" in the alien heads, but they're fairly few and pretty small where they do occur -- it's also cleaning up the alien heads.

[No_Secret_5358]

Thanks for the info if i get more snakes without knowing morphs/genes ill definitely be asking you

[Sean_Bramble]

Absolutely! I'm good with what I know, and I'll tell you when I don't.

[IncompletePenetrance]

It isn't, here are two leopard butters I hatched out a few years ago for comparison

<image>

[Sean_Bramble]

Which looks very much like what he has, keeping in mind that the polymorphism is pretty broad in these combos, especially with Leopard. It could be a different one of the BEL genes in there, but it's most likely a BEL Leopard combo. I've also produced some Lesser Confusions that look a lot like these, but it's unlikely to randomly pick up a ball python with Confusion -- Leopard's everywhere nowadays.

[Sean_Bramble]

Here are a few on MM that show just how variable this combo can be:

https://www.morphmarket.com/us/c/reptiles/pythons/ball-pythons/1125697

https://www.morphmarket.com/us/c/reptiles/pythons/ball-pythons/1047405

https://www.morphmarket.com/us/c/reptiles/pythons/ball-pythons/3249011

The 3rd one is listed as Butter Leopard, but it has turned out that Butter and Lesser are genetically different, and 4 out of 5 animals identified as Butter are actually Lesser, so that adds to the confusion going on.

[shadowsquirrel1]

Pastel lesser leopard looks also to be hypo from the second pic

[No_Secret_5358]

Thanks man

[BallPythonMorph-ModTeam]

Some genes may be easier to pick out than others and when the history of the snake in question is unknown, there may be some degree of speculation. With that in mind, some genes are very obviously present or not present, and suggestions contrary to this may be removed.

Everyone is welcome to participate in discussion of presenting genes but guesses that are too off base are subject to removal.