The Yellow Jacket ball python is what some might call a super-exceptional Pastel Jungle ball python. It is not, however, a pastel. It is a different blood line and it is actually a multiple-gene animal. Ian Gniazdowski from Outback Reptiles was the first to produce the Yellow Jacket and the exact ingredients used to make them is something of a secret. Very few have been produced to date and the photo shown here is the first ever Super Pastel Yellow Jacket. She hatched out of a clutch of six eggs in June of 2008 and was the only super in the clutch. Click on the photo to see a larger view.
Pictures can barely do her justice and she was even more yellow than the photo shows. In person she was simply stunning.
Unfortunately, this girl was born with a congenital defect that made it impossible for her to survive. She died about a day after this photo was taken. So, to date, there is no living Super Pastel Yellow Jacket. With a little luck Ian will produce some in 2009 and we will slowly begin to seem them available to the rest of us. I will be fighting to be first in line for the first super pastel yellow jacket male he lets go of.
Possible Homozygous Lethal?
Cody,
Doubt it. Just bad luck is more likely. The animal was fully formed, lived for a short while and then passed. While not frequent it does happen with some regularity when hatching animals in large quantity (far less than 1% of the time). Sometimes they are just weak and don’t make it.