Yes, I'm going there: any updates on the scaleless gene yet?

I don't personally say so, geneticists do though.

I agree, I don't think people should keep secrets when it comes to morphs. I personally bought into the project from Jason Amos and he has been 100% up front with me about everything. I'm confident that it will prove out and that the scaleless snake dying was simply due to improper care or an illness in BHB's collection (they've had a lot of snakes dying apparently).

I think Winston and Jason are going to be perfectly honest about what happens with the project, and I know for certain that I will be. Last I knew Winston's female reabsorbed her follicles and I'm not sure if he had another one ready to go as well. The scaleless snake could have died for any number of reasons, and until I see a steady correlation where all of these snakes are having similar issues I don't see a need to spread doubt.

I'm going to keep my fingers crossed, I think that the scaleless snakes will completely revolutionize the market and bring back interest in ball pythons. Even before I was invested the prospect was very exciting to me.

You have to figure too, besides being in a facility that apparently is having issues with disease and death, this snake was also undoubtedly inbred. I think until we see more than one snake die we can't jump to any conclusions.

I will say that I was completely against the project and thought it was a bust until I talked to Jason Amos about it. I actually had no plans of buying in at all, but once he gave me all of the facts and showed me what all was going on I asked to buy from him. That's how confident I am that all of the negative things we are seeing are simply rumors.

Granted, I could be wrong and I'm taking a big chance, but I've yet to see any concrete evidence of the negative things I've seen people say. In fact so far I've seen exactly the opposite of what people have said or speculated.

I hope you're right, Nick. I was also very excited about the morph, but all this secrecy has left me extremely skeptical and wary. I will not be purchasing any of these animals until someone issues full disclosure with breeding records, offspring survival, and breeder survival of homozygous animals. I know I can't be the only one steering clear of this morph for now, given all the political baggage that is currently associated with it.

Originally Posted by snowgyre

I hope you're right, Nick. I was also very excited about the morph, but all this secrecy has left me extremely skeptical and wary. I will not be purchasing any of these animals until someone issues full disclosure with breeding records, offspring survival, and breeder survival of homozygous animals. I know I can't be the only one steering clear of this morph for now, given all the political baggage that is currently associated with it.

I absolutely understand and agree. Like I said, I felt exactly the same way until I talked to Jason and got the facts. I don't expect to have an easy time selling any of the offspring until someone comes clean about what's going on, but I think this will be huge for the industry and I want to be a part of it. I realize that there is risk involved but I'm going to stay hopeful, everything negative that I've heard so far is just rumors.

Regardless of how everyone has handled things, this is going to be amazing if it proves out. I'm really really hopeful that it will, seeing all of the different ball python morphs and combos scaleless will be amazing.

I think the biggest problem is how BHB handled it. It's something that people were extremely skeptical about to begin with and him not showing anything just made it worse. It's one of those things that if you had it, why wouldn't you be posting new pics of it every single day? I actually heard that it had died a long time ago, and then I saw a video of it as an adult perfectly fine on SnakeBytes. I also heard that at Daytona it was messed up and moving weird, but I saw videos and talked to people and it was perfectly fine.

Everything negative I've heard so far has been completely false. I understand why the rumors would start because they seemed perfectly believable to me, but until we see some actual facts and not just hearsay from people who aren't even involved in the project I'm going to reserve judgment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, it's super exciting and I'm hoping we find out this summer when people hatch more out.

I saw the scaleless at Daytona and thought it was acting and looked fine. I heard a lot of people calling it unhealthy and what not, but that's not what I observed. Considering it was in a completely transparent plexiglass box being closely examined by hundreds of people, it was stressed, sure, but unhealthy? No.

Originally Posted by snowgyre

I saw the scaleless at Daytona and thought it was acting and looked fine. I heard a lot of people calling it unhealthy and what not, but that's not what I observed. Considering it was in a completely transparent plexiglass box being closely examined by hundreds of people, it was stressed, sure, but unhealthy? No.

Exactly. And if I had just listened to rumors and not looked into it I would still believe that it was messed up and deformed. There is a lot of hate surrounding this for some reason but so far none of it has had any basis.

I have a bunch of scaleless rats and they look and feel amazing. With the genetic diversity available in balls...I can't wait.

I agree, I have a pair of scaleless Texas rats and really enjoy them. I'd get into scaleless corns if it was legal to own corns in Georgia. I was really excited when BHB hatched the scaleless out, I fell in love with scaleless balls the first time I saw a photo of the one fluke scaleless that died about a decade ago (non-BHB animal). I guess we'll see.

Originally Posted by snowgyre

but I wasn't seeking opinions about how people felt about scalelessness in snakes. I was asking about the progress of the project in ball pythons, given the silence on the issue.

Bob Clark posted a photo of Scaleless breeding on his FB page (since recessive? resulting babies would be hets)

Thanks for the tip, April. I just checked out his page. He only has an image of a scaleless het (aka scaleless head) that is also 100% het for pied breeding a pied, so it's not a homozygous scaleless animal. Or is there another photo you saw? I admit I didn't go digging too far back in the posts.