OK Merlin,you're right.Let's forget about all that and let's be nice to each other. Sorry about my earlier post,I apologize.
diggy,I wish you all the best with your new BP and please keep us posted what happened at the vet and how he's settling in.

I took my snakes to a local vet but they didn't have the probing tools as we are a small town and they didn't charge me for this service but he determined these were nothing more than healing bites and burns.. Looking it over carefully with a large magnifying glass determined not ticks or other bugs and then staying in a container with mite spray (just because)allowed these two to be together. I want to study up on the different morphs of BP's. THis newer one on the left is allot whiter than it's counter part. Is this a ghost of some sort or what ever you call it? Let me know what you all think why it is so light. Age was undetermined on these guys, so maybe when a friend and I travel to NV to have it probed I will know more.
Thanks Merlin for allowing everyone to be able to re read what I wrote, BTW im a female. It's a common mistake.
Without further adieu here they are:

I have some darker and some lighter colored BPs....I often wonder what the big deal was on Ghosts lol....One of mine is very light like yours!! They are very nice.....Lyn

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Warmest Regards from Lyn

OOPS!
I stand corrected Ms Diggy!

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

Personally, I see nothing wrong with using hamsters as feeders. We use mice and rats after all. To say that killing mice and rats is ok, but killing hamsters is wrong, is a little hypocritical in my opinion. Its playing favorites. They're both rodents, both edible to snakes, and both are also companion animals. I keep rats and mice as pets, and love them, but I still feed other mice to my snakes. I have a pet anole, but I feed my non-pet anoles to my vine snake. We eat cows, who's to say eating a cow is ok, but eating a horse is wrong? I'm sure cow lovers might have a difference of opinion on that Just my 2 cents.

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+5 bonus points to whoever finds me a job!

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

According to my understanding, ball pythons largely feed on hamsters in the wild. I can't say I've seen this myself, and certainly I wasn't aware of any particular species of hamster residing in central and western africa (forested regions), but I would believe hamsters and gerbils over the mice and rats we try to feed them, which aren't well adapted to live in that area of the world. I've also seen people who haven't been able to get their BP to take rats or mice, frozen or thawed, get a terrific feeding response out of their bp by introducing it to a hamster, indicating a rather particular built-in preference for them as a food source. I'm guessing this is where the current practice of giving a BP the occassional hamster came from.

I've never done it, but I do say that if it came down to the health of any one of my BPs, I wouldn't be above giving it a try.

Hello,

The species of "hamster" you are referring to is called a jerboa. Those are a staple in the wild BP's diet.

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To correct any confusion, BPs don't normally eat a lot of rats and mice in the wild, but they don't eat hamsters either. The various species of hamsters are native to Asia and Europe. As Rich said, they eat more jerboas.

Hamsters are family Cricetidae
Gerbils are family Muridae (along with rats and mice)
Jerboas are family Dipodidae, and look sort of like kangaroo rats

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+5 bonus points to whoever finds me a job!

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

I've not a problem with feeding hamsters, like Matt I have rats as pets but I also have feeder rats in my freezer. I simply think it is often unnecessary unless every single thing has been tried to get the snake feeding on f/t, just because of the inconvenience and cost. I do however think it is cruel to feed live, again perhaps unless a snake will absolutely not eat anything else. And that said, one of our BPs goes for at least 6 months, last year 8, without food, and we still weren't worried.

As for the ghost morph.. these are extremely expensive and not so common so it is more likely you just have two different looking normals Diggy, our adult males are very different in colour but we have no reason to suspect they are different morphs. Both are very beautiful, although I have to admit I prefer the lighter one on the left, my preference, but it is pretty.

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"If you know everything you may as well blow your brains out because the reason for existence is to learn more everyday." - Mark O'Shea, 2004

Cool, thanks. There must be something similar in the way the smell...not that I would know that (I'm not in the business of sniffing hamsters).