All Angles Creatures

Skin colour (TFEC) Ball Python

peer reviewedTFECrecessive

How it inherits

One copy
One copy shows nothing at all. The animal looks ordinary and is called a carrier, or “het”.
Two copies
Two copies, one from each parent, are needed before it appears.

Skin colour (TFEC) carrier × Skin colour (TFEC) carrier

Four ways the two can meet.

1 in 4het Skin colour (TFEC)
1 in 4het Skin colour (TFEC)
1 in 4Skin colour (TFEC)
1 in 4Normal
  • het Skin colour (TFEC)50%
  • Skin colour (TFEC)25%
  • Normal25%

A pale box is an animal that shows the morph. These are the odds for each egg on its own, not a promise about a clutch.

What this rests on

A peer-reviewed paper identifies the variant behind this morph in the gene TFEC.

  • Piebaldism and chromatophore development in reptiles are linked to the tfec gene. — Curr Biol 2023
  • Genetics and biology of coloration in reptiles: The curious case of the Lemon Frost geckos. — Physiol Genomics 2023
  • On the role of TFEC in reptilian coloration. — Front Cell Dev Biol 2024

Entry in Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals

What happens if you breed it

Every pairing involving Skin colour (TFEC), worked out gene by gene — including what the clutch can be and anything documented about the animals it produces.

See every Ball Python pairing

Other Ball Python morphs