Now there are AXANTHIC black headed pythons!!!

http://market.kingsnake.com/detail.php?cat=7&de=425567

How is this possible?
A year or 2 ago, albinos were produced. Now axanthics have been produced.
How can this be since NO WC animals are allowed out of Australia? Where are these new genes coming from?

It could be a random genetic error that results in the production of the first and carries on as an inheritable trait.
These things don't fall out of the sky in the wild, they all come from a random genetic occurance, it's just not at all common in captivity, because it's never anticipated but in the wild you don't know, you just collect it after it was hatched with no history of it.

That or it was snuck out of Australia. Do blackheads inhabit New Guinea or no? Because if they do that could be an option.

it could be that there is a recessive gene for the albinos and axanthics. i was learning about this in my genetics class not long ago. it might be possible that a wide majority of black headeds carry a dominant normal gene meaning that there are few black headeds with the the recessive gene coming out in hatchlings.

Arent those the coolest thing!!!
Ill have to go check the ol'savings account,see if i can scratch up some money.

And yes its a simple recessive gene and yes they are legal.
If you go to his website its all explained there.

Christopher Frank

Crap Steve, I am way out of the loop. Even though Black heads are on my list I didn't know there were albinos (here), let alone Axanthics. Good question though. I knew of albino in Australia, but not here. Looks to be only two options; 1. smuggled. or 2. limited gene pool, inbreeding has finally produced them. One hopes it's not the first option, but the second option? It seems that it would have been found a lot sooner, as it is a simple genetic trait, as opposed to a line bred trait that may take many generations to develop, or even a more complicated genetic trait that may take longer to find.

My money would be on smuggling. Any other possibilities are a little too remote for me.
That being said, I remember seeing photos of blackheads 15 years ago that looked exactly like that. They were not being billed as axanthic however, whether they were or not I have no idea. Breeding was rare back then. It does allow the possibility that the gene has been floating around for that long though and increased breeding success in recent years has caused it to resurface.
There is also in existance a T+ albino blackhead (purple headed). I used to have a picture someplace of it. It's in a collection in Oz and the pic was sent to me by a friend there. If it's still alive I'd say we'll see those coming out of Europe one day as well. (It was not a pretty snake IMO)

Despite the fact that Oz has been closed to exports for 30 years, things still come out. Odd genes just increase that possibility due to the global market potential. Look at the huge number of dwarf monitors in captivity today. The animals that founded the current breeding population we have were not brought out 30 years ago, the monitor scene just really got started what 10 years ago?
Albino carpet pythons will be in the US a lot sooner than most people think as well. They are already being bred in Europe.