#morph monday

This morph isn't an actual gene like say a pastel ball python but is line bred instead. It consists of being orange starting at the base of the tail (hence "carrot tail") and having it go at least 15% up the length of the tail. The carrot tail usually occurs in other gene morphs which are: the RAPTORs, Murphy Patternless, all of the Tangerine and Hypo morphs, all three albino strains, and now less commonly in Blizzards. I found no info on when/where it was created, but I assume wild caught ones showed it slightly and it was intensified by selective breeding by many breeders at the start of leopard gecko captive breeding. The price on them can vary a lot because it is a line bred trait that occurs in many genes, but you can find something like a super hypo tangerine carrot tail yearling for $70-80.

Carrot tail leopard gecko

Super hypo tangerine carrot tail leopard gecko

Murphy patternless carrot tail leopard gecko

While okeetee is considered a morph, it is actually a locality where they are from. Okeetees are from South Carolina and display deep-red saddles with jet-black borders. They were one of the first types of corn snake morphs to be worked with, in the late 60s to early 70s, and greatly influenced the expansion of corn snake popularity. Okeetee can, of course, occur alongside other morphs and create combinations. Okeetee and reverse okeetee are not the same thing. It is not an expensive morph at all and a single gene okeetees will start out around $50-60.

Okeetee corn snake

Tessera okeetee corn snake

The pastel gene was first produced by NERD in 1997. It is an incomplete dominant gene, meaning 1 gene and 2 genes look different. The 2 genes version is called super pastel. The gene intensifies the yellow of the snake, and other common features are green eyes, white lips, high blushing. Some pastels are "high quality" and very blushed and yellow, while others are "low quality and are just a little bit lighter than a normal; there is a whole sliding scale from low-high. Pastel is a very common gene, and they are very inexpensive on the ball python scale. There are different lines of pastel such as citrus pastel, which was invented Amir Soleymani in 2002. Black pastel and green pastel are unrelated to pastel and not interchangeable with it.

Juvenile pastel ball python

Adult pastel ball python

Juvenile super pastel ball python

Sub adult super pastel ball python

Juvenile pastel banana ball python

Juvenile super pastel clown ball python