Piebald Royal Pythons for sale in the UK

The pied gene, also known as Piebald, creates sections of pattern and solid white without pigment in a royal python (ball python). It is one of the most recognisable genes in the hobby. This morph appears in combination with almost every other morph. No two come out the same.

Appearance

The head and neck have the usual eye stripe and normal colour and pattern. Usually, the pattern begins in a rough Y behind the head. A smudge is all that some pieds have on their mostly white heads. The alien-head pattern is lost in the coloured sections further back, where they carry paired stripes and blotches against bright white. White amounts are random. This ranges from a few patches on an otherwise patterned snake to nearly all white. The babies' coverage is not predicted by the parents. Because the pattern is usually heaviest toward the front and thins toward the tail, a half-white pied tends to be patterned forward and white behind. A white belly that is normally free of markings is the surest way to tell a very low-white pied from a normal with a stray white patch. Pied lines throw ringers, which are a patch or ring of odd scales, more often than other morphs.

Genetics

Because Piebald is recessive, any animal that is not a visual looks like a normal royal python. This means that Het Piebald, 50% Het Piebald, 66% Het Piebald and Pos Het Piebald animals cannot be identified by eye. You can use a shed-skin genetic test for the gene. The mutation was traced to a premature stop codon in the gene tfec by a 2023 paper in Current Biology. Piebald sits in no allelic complex. Rather than being genes of their own, multi-gene animals have names like Dreamsicle (Lavender Albino Piebald), Killer Pied (Super Pastel Piebald), Panda Pied (Super Black Pastel Piebald), Pumpkin Pied (Yellow Belly Piebald), Lightning Pied (MJ Axanthic Piebald) and Spied (Spider Piebald). The Kahl, Wreck Room and Kobylka lines are recognised lines. The first captive-bred pieds were produced by Peter Kahl in 1997.

Known issues

Small eyes can appear when Piebald is bred with specific supers. These include several from the BEL complex such as Super Lesser, Super Mojave, Super Phantom, Super Mystic, Super Russo and Super Special pieds, as well as Super Fire Pieds and Lesser Platinum Pieds. This issue is with those specific combinations rather than a single-gene pied. Ask the seller about the eye size in the line if you are planning or buying one of these projects.