The Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python Morph is one of the most sought-after morphs around and for good reason. They are an incredible looking snake and are not overly expensive.
This morph is quite unique in that it is the ‘super form’ of a co-dominant morph. However, instead of a single morph producing this snake, a number of different morphs can produce them.
These co-dominant snakes that can all produce this ‘super form’ are known collectively as the Blue Eyed Leucistic complex morphs.
Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python Description
As its name suggests, the Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python is a Leucistic snake. This means that the snake loses some of the pigmentation in its skin.
Known as a BEL for short, this morph is a color mutation that is almost completely white in color. However, they can sometimes have some yellow coloration coming through.
The most fascinating feature of a Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python is their eyes. They have bright blue eyes which are easily identifiable and this is where the morph gets its name.
Blue Eyed Leucistic Genetics
The Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python is the ‘super form’ that is produced when breeding a number of different co-dominant morph.
These co-dominant snakes that can all produce this ‘super form’ are known collectively as the Blue Eyed Leucistic complex morphs.
Some of the different morphs that can be bred to produce a Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python include the Butter, Lesser and Mojave, morphs.
Breeding these morphs together will allow you to produce BEL’s. To explain this further, we will discuss what happens when you breed two Mojave Ball Pythons together. However, the exact same concept can be applied to the other Blue Eyed Leucistic complex morphs.
Mojave Ball Python Genetics
The Mojave Ball Python is a co-dominant morph. This means that, like a dominant morph, you only need one Mojave to produce Mojave babies. However, if you breed two Mojave’s together, you will produce Super Mojave’s which are Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Pythons.
A Mojave Ball Python will contain the genetic mutation in one of the alleles in their DNA sequence while a Blue Eyed Leucistic will contain the genetic mutation in both of the alleles. The appearance of these two snakes is visibly different, which distinguishes the co-dominant mutation from a dominant mutation.
How are genetics passed on in Ball Pythons
We are not going to go into too much detail about how genetics work in snakes in this article. We have explained it in detail in our Recessive Ball Python Morphs article. Make sure you check that out if you are not familiar about how genetic mutations are passed.
While the article discusses recessive Ball Pythons, the concept of how parents pass on their genetics is the same for all co-dominant morphs, the appearance of the offspring is just different.
Here is a basic breakdown of a DNA strand:
Locus – This is the location of a gene/allele on a DNA strand.
Allele – Genes are made up of pairs of Alleles. Therefore an allele is a single gene on a given locus.
The image above shows a DNA strand of two snakes. Let’s say, they are a Normal and Pied Ball Python. Let’s say the first locus on this DNA strand is for the Pied Gene. You can see that the first snake has 2 normal genes (not Pied) while the second snake has two Pied genes (visible Pied).
When these snakes reproduce, they will each pass on one of their Alleles from each locus to their offspring. This means that the offspring will receive one of their ‘Pied’ genes from their mother and one from their father.
We will use this concept to explain how different pairings will produce Mojave Ball Pythons.
Mojave Ball Python x Normal Ball Python
The simplest way to produce a Mojave Ball Python is to pair a Mojave with a normal Ball Python. The resulting offspring will consist of 50% Mojave’s and 50% Normal Ball Pythons. This pairing will not create any Super Mojave’s or Blue Eyed Leucistics.
As you can see, there 4 possible outcomes. We have named each allele and colour coded them. As each parent can only pass one gene each, the possible outcomes are 1-3, 1-4, 2-3 and 2-4. Alleles 1-2 cannot both be passed, either can 3-4 as this would mean a single parent passed on both of the genes.
So the 4 possible outcomes were MN, MN, NN and NN. MN means that one of the alleles were Mojave while the other was normal. The NN outcome means that both genes were normal.
As the Mojave morph is a co-dominant mutation, only one of the alleles needs to hold the trait, for the offspring to be a Mojave. This means that the offspring will consist of 50% Mojave’s and 50% Normal Ball Pythons.
Mojave x Mojave
Another way to produce a Mojave Ball Python is to pair a Mojave with another Mojave. The resulting offspring will consist of 50% Mojave Ball Pythons, 25% Normal Ball Pythons and 25% Super Mojave’s (known as a Blue Eyed Leucistic morph).
In this case, the 4 possible outcomes were MM, MN, MN and NN. MM occurred when both parents passed on the Mojave gene. As this mutation is co-dominant, this combination will result in a Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python (BEL).
This means that the offspring will consist of 50% Mojave, 25% Normal and 25% Super Mojave.
Blue Eyed Leucistic x Normal Ball Python
If you breed a Super Mojave to a Normal Ball Python, all of the offspring will be Mojave. This is because one of the parents will always pass the Mojave gene while the other parent will always pass the Normal gene. As a result, all of the offspring will be MN, i.e. one Mojave allele and one Normal allele.
Blue Eyed Leucistic x Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python
If you breed a Blue Eyed Leucistic to a Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Python, all of the offspring will be Blue Eyed Leucistic. This is because both of the parents will always pass the Mojave gene. As a result, all of the offspring will be MM, i.e. both alleles will be Mojave.
Other Ball Python Morph Guides
We have a wide range of Ball Python Morph guides. You can check some of them out here:
Albino Ball Python Morph
Banana Ball Python Morph
Black Pastel Ball Python Morph
Butter Ball Python Morph
Champagne Ball Python Morph
Chocolate Ball Python Morph
Cinnamon Ball Python Morph
Enchi Ball Python Morph
Fire Ball Python Morph
GHI Ball Python Morph
Mojave Ball Python Morph
Orange Dream Ball Python Morph
Pied Ball Python Morph
