What Is a Royal/Ball Python?

Family: Boidae (Boas and Pythons)
Subfamily: Pythoninae
Genus: Python
Species: regius

Moderate Length of 4-6 feet with a heavy girth.

Native to Western Africa where they are captured and exported in numbers averaging 92,129 per year from 1990 to 1998 (Reptiles Magazine, March 2002 pg 54) annually for the pet trade in the U.S. alone. They are also being exported in increasingly larger numbers to Asian markets as food.

The number of snakes being imported has two major effects. The first is that the wild population is being rapidly depleted. The article written by Dave and Tracy Barker, refered to in the previous paragraph states that the numbers being imported signigicantlly dropped in 2001. The exporters in Africa have been unable to collect enough ball pythons to match the totals of previous years. The second is that they are brought over in such abundance that the price is kept so low that they are seen as expendible or worthless to many people in the pet trade.

Another side effect of the price of wild-caught specimens being so inexpensive is that there is little monetary motivation for any captive breeding except in the case of expensive color morphs. With native populations dwindling this could soon be different story.

Those who do go through the trouble to breed in captivity do so only for the love of the species. Until the importing of the Royal/Ball python is stopped, as Europe did in 1997, this will continue for the trend. At some point the wild population will become depleted to the point where either it will become harder to collect in enough numbers and the trade will die out or the species will be placed on the endangered list and will be protected. It is my hope that the U.S. will limit the importation of this species before either of those options become necessary.