Genetic Morph: Spider
Status: Proven Dominant
When: 1999
By Whom: NERD

This mutation has minimal pattern, pale eyes, odd faded coloration, white (pied) & yellow/orange side scales, black speckled mustache and a pale tongue. A very extraordinary new morph, this snake is an extreme animal that looks like no other ball python. This mutation offers incredible possibilities when combined with other mutations. When bred together we imagine a white-sided patternless animal with a hypo golden back. Thus far we have seen a Spider X Pastel combination in the Bumble Bee Spiders, and Spider x Super Pastel in the Killer Bee Spiders. Spiders & all of their variants have very outgoing personalities that seem to be inheritable, always on the move and curious.

Upper text by NERD

As of 2005 there have been several occurrences of breeders noticing that some of their Spiders do "weird things".........these weird things include head shaking when nervous or excited, quivering and in the worst case, sever locomotion problems .........I myself have noticed this to some degree in every Spider ball or Spider cross that I have in my own collection. Spiders that I have produced myself, bought or traded for have all done the "wobble". I picked up a 400 gram female Spider from a breeder, she was perfect in every way............a few months went by and she became the worst case of locomotion problems I have ever seen in my collection of Spiders.

Is this something that "comes and goes"?.............another case for me was a pair of Bumble Bees that I got from the same breeder............buth the male and the female had the "wobbles" when they arrived.......they eat and seem to be healthy, but they do "weird things".........

NERD says that he is aware of this and that it is "part of the spider trait".

I love the Spider mutation and think that it makes some of the best combos around.........the problem is the "wobble"............it's not predictable and seems to be able to "pop up" when ever it wants to. This issue could bring down a world of hurt on breeders producing and selling "perfect Spiders" only to have the customer not satisfied later on "if" the Spider were to start with the "weird stuff".........

All we do is out cross the Spider to normal females............the trait couldn't be out crossed anymore...........so out crossing does not seem to be the "fix"...............is there even a "fix"?

I would be crushed to take the time and produce a "Lavender Albino Spider" only to have it eventually do "weird things".......

I place no blame on NERD at all..............I'm just writing down the facts that I know and have experienced with my own Spider balls....as have many others in the biz.

I'd say for now that it is "there" and that there is probably nothing we can do to make it better aside from not breeding Spiders that do "weird things"...........and that will probably be to extreme of a tactic for most.

To date ( 05 ) there is no talk of a Super Spider..........maybe more Spider x Spider breedings is the answer to fixing the problems? ( RDR blurp )