Banana / Coral Glow Royal Pythons for sale in the UK
A Banana features shades of lilac, orange and yellow, with small black freckles appearing in patches as it matures. You should check which parent passed on the gene if you are buying a breeding male. This determines whether he is a male maker or a female maker.
- Visuals
- £100
- 7 for sale
All Banana royal pythons
About the Banana gene
The Banana gene is the most well-known sex-linked gene in the hobby. It makes a royal python (ball python) yellow, orange and lilac, while the snake gets scattered black freckles as it grows. If you are buying a breeding male, you must first establish if every male Banana is a male maker or a female maker.
Appearance
Yellows, oranges and lilac make up the ground colour. The pattern of the normal alien-head stays in place while bright blushing appears between the markings. A light tan-orange head with faded colour and little or no headstamp is common. The belly shows a crisp, faded yellow down the centre and heavy pattern along the edges. It is the black spotting that gives a Banana away. This spotting falls at random in clusters or single scales, mostly in the dark pattern between the alien heads, but some animals have it over the entire body. Because it builds with age, a hatchling shows less of it than the adult it becomes. The amount varies a lot from snake to snake. To pick out the Bananas in a clutch, asymmetrical spotting is a good way.
Genetics
Banana is incomplete dominant. Most keepers still call it co-dom because one copy shows and two copies give Super Banana. Since Coral Glow and Whitesmoke are just the same gene with different names, Coral Glow, Super Coral Glow, Whitesmoke and Super Whitesmoke all belong to this family. Before NERD renamed it Coral Glow, the original import was called Whitesmoke by Vida Preciosa International.
A male takes his status from the parent that gave him the gene because the gene sits on the sex chromosomes. He is a female maker and passes it mainly to his daughters if he is from a Banana female. If he is sired by a Banana male, he is a male maker and passes the gene mainly to his sons. A female Banana passes it to sons and daughters alike. Because the gene crosses between the X and Y chromosomes now and then, a maker can throw a Banana of the unexpected sex. Only what a male actually produces confirms his status. This inheritance was part of the evidence that pythons use XY rather than ZW sex chromosomes, which genetic markers confirmed in 2017.
Rainbow Banana and Banana Bee (Banana Spider) are the named combos. The Banana line was proved by Will Slough in 2003, and the Coral Glow line was proved by NERD in 2002.