Ebony

We acquired our first Ebony ball python into our collection in 1994. She was imported from Africa through Strictly Reptiles.

Ebony ball pythons are produced by breeding a Yellow Belly to a Granite ball python. The Ebony is almost jet black as a hatchling with a dark gold broken dorsal stripe and granite speckled sides. The two that we are aware of were both extremely small as hatchlings approximately 35-40 grams each. As adults their heads tend to lighten to a very dark brown and their pattern becomes more visible. 

We received our Ebony ball python in the group of our Melanistic ball pythons. As a matter of fact until Amir Soleymani produced the first captive bred and hatched Ebony ball python, we were considering her just another Melanistic ball python with a neat dorsal stripe. Our Ebony produced a clutch of 3 eggs in 2003 of which 2 hatched. They appeared to be Wild Type “Normal“ ball pythons. But this was before we were aware they were linked to the Yellow Belly and Granite mutations and they were sold as Normals. Because of the interesting outcome of breeding Pastel Jungles to Melanistic ball pythons, in 2004 our Ebony female was bred to a Pastel Jungle. Naturally, once we saw Amir’s Ebony, we started looking closely at the two remaining offspring (both were Pastel Jungles). That’s right, we had already sold the three Wild Type offspring from the clutch. So we never paid attention to see if they were Granites or Yellow Bellies. But we did get lucky! It appears that we did produce one Pastel Yellow Belly which we will be breeding back to our Ebony in 2006.