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