In 2008 we welcomed a group of Ebony Ball Pythons. At the beginning, we were supposed to receive 5 among which 3 males and 2 females (3.2). After a thorough inspection of the specimens, it would rather be a group of 3.1 Ebony Ball Pythons and a Melanic female (0.1).

This group of animal is from Africa, and snakes are born in 2008, probably in April. We don't know if they were produced by African breeders or if they are wild caught.

Just after their arrival into our breeding center, they all spontaneously ate mice or rats of adapted sizes.

If it was not easy for us, at first sight, to differentiate the Melanic female from the Ebonies, it was not difficult to see that those Ball Pythons have nothing to do with "normal" specimens.

Those Ball Pythons are very unusual. According to Graziani, hatchlings weight around 35/40 g. Ours weighted between 44 and 70g when they arrived in our breeding center, so more ore less 3 months after they hatched, probably in April 2008.

They have a dark brown colour, with very particular lighter ocelli on our specimens. Indeed those last ones look like a light wave starting from the belly going back up on the sides of the snake. We can also find more or less round ocelli more or less far from the belly, located on sides.

In all cases, ocelli do not reach the dorsal of the animals. The zone roaming along the vertebral column is crossed by a full clearer "coffee with milk" stripe, sometimes interrupted, starting just behind the head to end at the end of the tail. Ventral scales are white and without any spots. The head is dark with very black eyes whose pupils are not visible.

The clearer stripe, characteristic of Ball Pythons, going on the sides of the head and colouring the inside of the eye has not this effect on Ebonies. So the eye is completely black.

Concerning genetics some people said that Ebony could be obtained by breeding a Yellow Belly Ball Python with a Granit one (Amir Soleymani). We have to tell you to be carefull with this argument because if producing Ebony was so easy, you could see a lot of them in breeding across the world. Indeed, this mutation is aesthetically very attractive (also expensive) and should have been produced in large number now... Yellow Belly Ball Pythons exist, Granite also, where are thus Ebonies?

Furthermore, if we refer to facts (cf: http://www.newenglandreptile.com/nerd/index.php/ball-pythons/yellowbelly-granite.html), breeding Yellow Belly with a Granite gives Yellow Belly Granite far from looking like our Ebonies...

It could be interesting to specify that our Ebonies do not have the characteristic spots of Granites you could notice on the Ebony introduced by Graziani on his website

It seems that Ebonies exist in the wild but their genetics is unknown. Some people also say that Ebony is not a genetic mutation. Today, all that we can say is that the genetics of this phase is not clear at all.

It's difficult to think that those animals with a so homogeneous and particular appearance cannot pass on to their descendants.

Concerning our projects, firstly we would like to see how they will look like growing. Once Adults, we will try to breed them together of course but also with other phases. We would like to know more about this form and hope future will help us.