This gorgeous snake is a young male ROYAL PYTHON named Mufasa, who hatched at a breeder friend's home in Essex on June 15th 2021.
Along with my other royal pythons, Mufasa is very popular with everyone he meets as he is absolutely beautiful as well as being very calm and docile when being handled.
In the picture below you can clearly see a series of pink holes or 'pits' between the eye and the front of Mufasa's head. These are very special heat-sensing pits which all pythons have and are used to literally detect the heat (or infrared thermal radiation) of their surroundings. If a rodent or other warm-blooded prey item comes close to them whilst they are hunting, a royal python can detect with incredible accuracy the warmest parts of the body to strike at! You can also see the small opening at the front of the mouth called the rostral groove, through which Mufasa's tongue flicks out of his mouth. All snakes have this groove so they don't need to open their mouth when they flick out their tongue to smell their surroundings!
Like all cold-blooded reptiles, Mufasa likes to bask in the sun. In the summer months, under careful supervision in case any neighbourhood cats should appear, he enjoys exploring our lawn area!
Whilst Mufasa still has plenty of growing to do, when I bought him in August 2021 he was just a couple of months old and was significantly smaller than he is now, as you can see below. His colouration has changed quite a bit over the years and even though he no longer has quite the same dramatic contrast between the dark and lighter markings, I think he is just as beautiful as ever.
In May/June 2022, ending just before Mufasa's first birthday, I ran a competition to find a name for this wonderful snake. On the morning of his first birthday I found out completely by chance that he actually shares his birthday with the anniversary of the release of The Lion King, which was released in cinemas on June 15th 1994! I instantly changed the name I had chosen (but not yet announced) to Mufasa, the king of the lions, which seems a perfect name for a royal python anyway but especially because Mufasa and Rafiki (my older royal python) are such great friends in the film!