Black back ball pythons are actually missing the spots and broken stripes along their backs, leaving what appears to be a black dorsal stripe. The genetics of these animals are sketchy at best. It appears that when two black backs are bred together, the offspring have varying amounts of black dorsal striping.

Black backs are often graded on the appearance of their dark dorsal stripe. At the top of this scale is the animal that is completely lacking dorsal spots and has an unbroken black stripe. At the bottom of the scale is the animal that has only patches of dark dorsal stripes and is in fact no different than a normal ball python.

I have some decent black backs in my collection and will breed them out in the upcoming years to see what pops out. It would be nice to be able to reproduce this morph with reliable results. I think a black back caramel albino or a hypomelanistic black back would make an awesome snake.