Snake Facts
The Ball Python
Python Regius
Ball pythons make fantastic pets because they stay smaller and are rather slow-moving when compared to other popular pet snakes, such as corn snakes. Ball pythons are non-venomous and kill their prey by constricting it, but are not large enough to cause harm to humans or pets. Ball pythons can be well-suited to both experienced keepers and beginners.
Life Span and Size
Native Habitat and Diet
Ball pythons eat smaller-sized prey items in the wild, including African soft-furred rats, other small rodents or birds. Ball pythons use their tongue to “smell” as well as heat-sensitive scales called heat pits to find their prey.
Morphs
It’s not uncommon to see an albino snake in captivity. These snakes, like many other albino animals, are lacking certain pigments in their skin. Many snake breeders have selectively bred snakes in captivity that have missing, increased, or altered pigments such black, red and yellow, as well as other genetic anomalies. These colour variations are called “morphs” and can range in price from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. The possibilities for these morphs are essentially endless, and ball pythons offer the most versatility and variety in creating morphs.
Some examples of ball python morphs are albino (lacking black pigment), striped, piebald (normal colouration with patches of solid white), axanthic (lacking yellow pigment), ghost (hypomelanistic, meaning lacking in overall pigment) leucistic (solid white with no pattern and blue eyes) and pastel (lighter in overall colour with more vivid yellow colouration).
Status
In other areas, habitat destruction and hunting ball pythons for their meat or skins can harm populations. The ball python’s status in the wild is stable, but is thought to be declining. Many ball pythons are exported for the pet trade, which is why a captive-bred ball python is the best choice.
