Fire Royal Pythons for sale in the UK

Fire is a colour gene. It makes a royal python (ball python) brighter and lighter when it is on its own. This gene also brightens colour and cleans up pattern in combinations, which is why so many designer animals carry it. Two copies make a white snake with black eyes.

Appearance

A Fire appears as a normal that has been brightened. You will see stronger yellows and lighter browns that look like satiny gold. Because the crown of the head is heavily faded and usually has a lighter spot in the middle, that spot serves as a useful cue. Along the sides, the belly is clean with patches of pattern that are faded.

It can be hard to tell hatchlings from normals as they vary in tone. Every shed makes the browns turn more yellow, so a Fire is easy to pick out by adulthood.

Super Fire, the super, is a white snake with black eyes. The amount of yellow that shows varies from animal to animal, though many carry small random yellow patches often along the back.

Genetics

Fire is incomplete dominant: one copy gives a Fire, while two copies result in a different animal entirely. Many keepers still call it "co-dom", meaning the same gene. Listings use Fire and Super Fire. Because the hobby calls the super the Black Eyed Leucistic, or Black Eyed Lucy, a single Fire is sometimes sold as a het Black Eyed Lucy.

Fire is part of the Black Eyed Leucistic complex with Sulfur, Flame, Disco and Vanilla. Combinations have names such as Firefly (Fire and Pastel), Fire Bee (Fire, Pastel and Spider), Black Fire (Black Pastel and Fire), Nuclear (Butter and Fire) and Pyro Pied (Fire and Piebald).

The year 2003 is most often given for its origin. Whether NERD or Eric Davies first produced it remains disputed.