I THINK SOM1 SEXED MY SNAKE WRONG!

[RoyalRazer]

Today I was just sitting in my room wid my royal python next to me and reading a book on ball pythons I got ages ago, when I stumbled on the part about gender identification. It showed a pic of a males coloca or wateva and its tail which was short and fat, and then the girls which was long and thinner. To my horror my royal who id thought was a boy had a long, thin tail and showed the signs of a female when i checked!

Is Blade actually a Bladette?

P.S: He was sexed with a probe wen he was a hatchling and i read its hard to tell wen their so young so was it a mistake is he/she gonna grow 6 ft!
O also I AM NOT PROBIN MY SNAKE SO DON'T ADVISE ME 2!

[reptilemama]

Tail shape is not always a good indicator. As a general rule, yes, females tend to have longer, thinner tails, but that's not always the case. The only way to know for sure is to have a professional probe it, but if you're not planning on breeding, then just go with what you were told when you bought him. If it does end up being a female, don't worry- 6 foot ball pythons are rare, and it's not likely your snake will be more than 4 feet, *maybe* 5 at most.

[CC]

I believe probing hatchlings in inaccurate, but like reptilemama said if you not planning on breeding why worry. I really doubt any one here would advise you to probe your snake unless you had been taught how to do it.

[JuliusSqueezer]

Probing mistakes happen but usually the other way around. When you probe, you are looking for inverted hemipenes to probe down into. If it goes bump bump and there is no "pocket" ...it's a female. Where mistakes usually happen is that the probe is too large or the hemipenes are too tight and the probe doesn't enter and so a male is mistaken for a female. If someone poked the probe so hard that they punctured through the muscle wall of a female then forever she will probe "male" because such a puncture never heals. It doesn't usually cause any health risk to the snake nor does it prevent them from producing offspring. It just makes anyone trying to pair it up later really confused and frustrated. So anyway....It's kind of weird and rare for someone to probe and scream male when it's really a female. Unless you asked for a male and they didn't have one and they just told you what you wanted to hear. That's a more likely scenrio

[RoyalRazer]

I didn't ask 4 a specific sex so they couldn't have lied. Plus even if it did reach 6 ft im sure i would cope. Well im goin back to the shop today to get it checked out... wish me luck

[haroldo359]

update?

[RoyalRazer]

So turns out that I was rite. HA! Who said tail size means squat! So thats it the guy did it wrong first time... and now my he is a she.

And i hav to change it's name.

One day somones gona invent a scanner that u can jus zap ya herp and hey presto its a boy!

[JuliusSqueezer]

I'd be more thrilled if a spell checker for forums was invented.

[RoyalRazer]

Ye that wud b handy julius but the way i type the thing wud explode!