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Earlier this week, we had a really interesting litter born.
We have been wracking our brains trying to figure out what all is going on here. There's normals with full stripes:
Hypos with long stripes:
Snakes with bizarre background color:
And everything in between. 0% of this litter are boring normals. Needless to say, this brings about a lot of speculation. What are they? How did they get that way? Is it genetic? I will be attempting to explore these questions and more in this thread.
The sire of this litter is an EBV Red Group Salmon boa produced by Big Oz at Ozzy Boids back in the day when he worked with things that were more interesting than ball pythons.
This is what he looked like 10 years ago when we got him as a sub-adult:
And this is the most recent pic we have of him. He's actually MUCH prettier in person:
For those who don't know, EBV stands for East Bay Vivarium. They had a group of very red colored pastel boas that they began producing in the late 90's if I recall correctly. They sold these animals as Red Groups. Until recently, as far as we knew, Reverand was just a really pretty Salmon. Note, however, the connected tail blotches... almost a stripe.
The dam of this litter is Isabelle. She is a Monstertail boa produced by Jeff Ronne, The Boaphile. We don't have very many pictures of her as she is not a bundle of joy to mess with.
Her Sire was the first Pearlescent boa. For more info on pearlescents, check this thread: http://www.redtailboas.com/f18/pearl...53/#post573020
Her Dam was The Monster Tail.
A few years ago, I bred Reverand to Heylia, one of Isabelle's siblings. This is what we made from that:
We also made a few interesting things with solid stripes that don't look like pearlescents. Such as this one:
This was one of his offspring from a boring normal. Notice the connected tail blotches:
Here's one from the following year when I bred him to another one of the Pearlescent siblings. Also a Monster Tail:
Quite possibly more interesting, this year we bred Fuente (see above) to a boring hypo. Look at this one too:
So my theory is, Reverand makes babies with stripes. For some reason, when you breed it to a monster tail, that trait intensifies the striping. I don't know why or what else is going on here. The one thing that throws a monkey wrench into it is, back in 2011, I bred Reverand to Scarlett... the boring normal I mentioned earlier. She had a horrible litter of mostly slugs and a few dead babies. One of the babies was striped from its nose tip to its tail tip. I don't think I even have any picutres of it, but it was really neat looking.
In discussions with Jeff, we think that we are seeing the Nova trait at work. Especially with some of the less striped babies. Their background colors are blown out and they don't have saddle points.
Let the speculation begin! I would value all of your opinions on what I am seeing here.
We have been wracking our brains trying to figure out what all is going on here. There's normals with full stripes:
Hypos with long stripes:
Snakes with bizarre background color:
And everything in between. 0% of this litter are boring normals. Needless to say, this brings about a lot of speculation. What are they? How did they get that way? Is it genetic? I will be attempting to explore these questions and more in this thread.
The sire of this litter is an EBV Red Group Salmon boa produced by Big Oz at Ozzy Boids back in the day when he worked with things that were more interesting than ball pythons.
This is what he looked like 10 years ago when we got him as a sub-adult:
And this is the most recent pic we have of him. He's actually MUCH prettier in person:
For those who don't know, EBV stands for East Bay Vivarium. They had a group of very red colored pastel boas that they began producing in the late 90's if I recall correctly. They sold these animals as Red Groups. Until recently, as far as we knew, Reverand was just a really pretty Salmon. Note, however, the connected tail blotches... almost a stripe.
The dam of this litter is Isabelle. She is a Monstertail boa produced by Jeff Ronne, The Boaphile. We don't have very many pictures of her as she is not a bundle of joy to mess with.
Her Sire was the first Pearlescent boa. For more info on pearlescents, check this thread: http://www.redtailboas.com/f18/pearl...53/#post573020
Her Dam was The Monster Tail.
A few years ago, I bred Reverand to Heylia, one of Isabelle's siblings. This is what we made from that:
We also made a few interesting things with solid stripes that don't look like pearlescents. Such as this one:
This was one of his offspring from a boring normal. Notice the connected tail blotches:
Here's one from the following year when I bred him to another one of the Pearlescent siblings. Also a Monster Tail:
Quite possibly more interesting, this year we bred Fuente (see above) to a boring hypo. Look at this one too:
So my theory is, Reverand makes babies with stripes. For some reason, when you breed it to a monster tail, that trait intensifies the striping. I don't know why or what else is going on here. The one thing that throws a monkey wrench into it is, back in 2011, I bred Reverand to Scarlett... the boring normal I mentioned earlier. She had a horrible litter of mostly slugs and a few dead babies. One of the babies was striped from its nose tip to its tail tip. I don't think I even have any picutres of it, but it was really neat looking.
In discussions with Jeff, we think that we are seeing the Nova trait at work. Especially with some of the less striped babies. Their background colors are blown out and they don't have saddle points.
Let the speculation begin! I would value all of your opinions on what I am seeing here.
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