Reptile Industries retain the title for being the unprecedented breeders of the Butter ball python in 2001. To emerge with evidence that the appearance of the Butter ball python could be traced to its genes, they put this morph through a selective breeding program. Butters share a remarkable resemblance with Lesser Platinum ball pythons, even despite coming from a well different bloodline.
The Butter ball python happens to be a co-dominant morph typified by distinct yellow stripes sitting on a caramel-brown background. Consequent to their genetics, their colors are relatively lighter. Designer morphs like the blue-eyed Lucy, albinos, and the Butter Enchis are some of the designer morphs that can be produced from interbreeding Butters with other morphs. Most of these designers retain the yellow stripes of the Butter adorning a remarkably smooth caramel-brown background. Being relatively scarce, prices differ for the Butter ball python.
The Butter ball python is an exciting morph you dare not ignore. There is a wealth of interesting stuff you should know about it, like its suitability as a family pet, their typical cost, and how these morphs look like. I guess you are also keen to learn about the breeding of the Butter morph and other genetics too. Good news is these are what we will be examining in this guide.
Are Butter Ball Pythons Dangerous?
Butter ball pythons are reserved but not prone to aggression. They are naturally shy and prefer to keep to their own unless they have gotten used to you. A Butter ball python will not strike at you without significant provocation.
How Much Do Butter Ball Pythons Cost?
Compared to other exotic morphs like Bumblebee and Champagnes, Butters come cheap. It is only normal that designer morphs cost more than the basic morph. Butter ball pythons come under the wild-occurring morphs.
You can expect to find a Butter selling for somewhere between $100-$500. But the price shoots up exponentially when you have a designer morph being bred from a Butter. For the latter, prices could rise as far as $6,500.
Butter Ball Python Appearance
The coloration is the major distinguishing factor between the Butter and the general ball python family. The Butter ball python stands out for its caramel tone to adorning the regular brownness that comes with normal ball pythons.
The Butter’s patterns are significantly lighter. It is more of a combo of gold and tan. This pattern is adorned with black and white rings around it. In some unique cases, the Butter’s interior may contain some spots where you have a dark background.
Interestingly, female Butter ball pythons are bigger than their male counterparts. This increased size can be rightly attributed to sexual dimorphism. You could find a female Butter weighing somewhere around 1400-1900g with a length of 4-5 feet. For the males, you would find one with a length of 2-4 feet and a weight of 1300-1700g.
Butter ball pythons have significant blushing where its color patterns fade into another. The blushing tends to be concentrated on the Butter’s side, particularly on the lateral stripes.
Are Butter Ball Pythons Good Pets?
Butter Ball pythons are fantastic choices for pets. First, they are not aggressive and enjoy being held by their owners. While Butter ball pythons are admittedly reserved when young, they tend to get more sociable with humans as they mature.
The Butter relished playing hide-and-go-seek if you can spare the time. They would drape around your neck or curl around your arms so long they have bonded with you, a relationship typical of a snake and its owners.
Indeed, holding your Butter ball python once in a day is a nice routine. For the younger Butter ball pythons, they are not as sociable as their older siblings.
Compared to older snakes, the young Butter Ball python is a bit more prone to getting startled. Possibly, they can bite softly when agitated. The biting shouldn’t worry you at all given that Butter ball pythons don’t have venom.
Based on maintenance, the Butter ball python is a low-maintenance snake that you may choose to feed only one meal in 7 days. In some cases, the Butter is fed once in 14 days. Also, considering their docile and reserved temperament, you can heave your relief that they don’t need much of your attention. More than that, Butters are incredibly beautiful.
Another sound argument why you should have the Butter ball python as a pet is its affordability. Butters themselves are cheap in addition to their food not costing much. Often, there is no need for extravagant structures when you want to get a Butter.
Simply getting a heated terrarium may even do. You may not need a large one since the Butter is smaller.
Butter Ball Python Cool Facts
There are some pretty cool things you could be thrilled to know about Butter ball pythons.
Butter Ball Pythons are Some of the Smallest You Would See in Pythons
Typically, pythons are about 10 feet long on average. The Burmese python even goes as high as a length of 23 feet and a weight of 350 lbs. But the Butter ball python is much smaller. The Butter ball python is somewhere around 3 feet.
Their Babies are More Charming
If you belong to the party that says kids are more beautiful than their parents, here is something to support your argument. The hatchlings of the Butter are significantly more colorful than the parent.
The hatchling can be orange or yellow, with a distinct elegance to them. Sadly, as these beautiful hatchlings mature, these sharp colors fade, eventually darkening into the traditional black and caramel-brown pattern of the parent.
Butter Ball Python Genetics
Typically, you are going to see 3 distinct genes from ball pythons. These were the recessive, co-dominant, and dominant.
A dominant gene will come on top of a recessive gene. This means in the event of a combination, the dominant gene will be more manifested with the recessive gene relatively suppressed in the background (unexpressed).
These genetic combinations will also go on to determine how the offspring of these animals look. Interestingly, the gene of the Butter Ball python is neither dominant nor recessive. It is co-dominant.
This implies that it was going to be appearing alongside the other genes. The co-dominant genes of the Butter bally python is expressed in its skin color. These genes largely contribute to its appearance.
Upon interbreeding the Butter morph with another morph, neither genes of the parents would be essentially suppressed. Therefore, you are going to see the expression of the Butter genes appearing with those of the other morph. This applies regardless of the other morph being a dominant gene, recessive, or co-dominant.
Here you see the enthusiasm among breeders concerning Butters. The possibilities are brilliant when you breed the Butter ball python with other morphs.
Often, the question arises if there is any significant distinction between Butterball pythons and lesser ball pythons.
Are they really the same?
The general conception is that these morphs emerge from the same line. This assumption is not far from the similarity between patterns and colors of both the Butter ball python and its Lesser Ball counterpart. Indeed, the results tend to be the same when you use these morphs to make designer breeds.
A lot of the similarity between these morphs can be attributed to the fact that these two morphs were imported at fairly same intervals by two separate breeders. So, we had the Lesser ball python being imported by Ralph Davies Reptiles at the same time as when ReptMart breeders were importing the Butter morph.
How Rare are Butter Ball Pythons?
Butter ball pythons are not very exclusive neither are they littered around. This morph sits nicely between scarce and abundant.
Breeding Butter Ball Pythons
There is relative simplicity in breeding the Butter ball python given its co-dominant genes. When you breed two Butters, you are not essentially going to get a 100% butter ball python as an offspring.
Instead, you would have a ¼ probability of having a normal ball python, ¼ probability of having Super morphs (like the Blue Eyed Leucistic), and ½ probability of having a Butter.
Why do we have such a variance? Simply because of the co-dominant nature of the Butter’s gene. Realistically, you can only obtain one copy of the Butter ball python’s gene. You would have a BEL snake if you had two copies as seen from their dual expression owing to co-dominance.
As we showed in the variance, you will get one copy of a normal ball python from a breeding a Butter ball morph. When you interbreed two Butter ball python morphs, you have a ½ probability of each of the parents transferring the normal gene to the offspring, as opposed to the Butter gene.
Also, you have a ¼ probability of both parents passing the normal gene to the offspring. Similarly, you have a 1/4 chance that both parents could transfer the Butter gene resulting in a BEL snake.
Most Popular Butter Ball Python Morphs
It is understandable that Butter ball pythons have produced a fair range of designer morphs considering that the Butter morph was produced almost 19 years. That is quite a long amount of time, right?
How about we explore some of the best-known Butter ball python morphs you could know of? Here are some:
Butter Pastel which stands out for its significant blushing with a pretty lighter tone of brown
Butter Super Pastel which retains the Butter’s signature deep mid-brown but this time adorned with the Butter Pastel’s sharp yellow
Butter Cinnamon also known as Lithium which boasts the distinct pattern a Cinnamon is famed for
Butter Mojave which is a pure white snake enhanced with silvery-patterned traces also furnished with blue-silver eyes having an icy shade
Butter Albino which has two distinct yellow-orange shades with red eyes characteristic of albinos but lacking the white background
Butter Enchi which has the Enchi pattern adorned with yellow and deep orange coloration
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