Question about Paradoxes

[Kinra]

A member of my local herp society posted a link to this amazing paradox albino pied and it has started an interesting discussion.

The link: http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php...3905%2C1964110

One of the larger ball python breeders in the area Jim Stelpflug is part of my herp society and he says he has never had a paradox prove out. The specific example we were talking about is paradox albinos. Jim said: "I have or have had many paradox albino`s. I have never seen one prove out with anything other then a red eyed animal."

Does anyone know anything about this? Are paradoxes just messed up hets?

[Freakie_frog]

Paradox isn't reproducible. However the thing to keep in mind is there have been a couple of paradox recessives that have proven to not be homozygous and rather Het's. I have a Paradox lesser and he produces lessers but not paradox's

[Kinra]

I know the paradox aspect isn't genetic. I was just wondering if anyone could back up Jim's statement. I don't know how much Jim has invested in testing this, but I hadn't really considered before that a paradox albino could just be a really cool looking het albino.

[Freakie_frog]

I know the paradox aspect isn't genetic. I was just wondering if anyone could back up Jim's statement. I don't know how much Jim has invested in testing this, but I hadn't really considered before that a paradox albino could just be a really cool looking het albino.

Yes it's been proven that some of the paradox's have been really cool looking het's.

[snake lab]

I too have a paradox lesser and have bred him over the past 2 season to a number of females. One of which was a normal female with a huge paradox spot on her running up her side and bothin but some cool babies but never reproduced the paradox. Had fun dinkin with it though. As far as the paradox albino i got nothin to bring to the table on that sorry. Intresting though

[zeion97]

Here's a question.. Has a paradox been bred to a paradox? I've strayed from this topic because like hybrids, it seems to be touchy...

There are "birth" marks on quite a few different animals, including humans...IMO that's all it is, is a birth mark. BUT...TBH, I don't think we'll ever really know unless a paradox proves out..which COULD be possible, though I personally think it isn't.

[meowmeowkazoo]

Doesn't Ben Siegal claim to have a line of proven paradox ivories?

[RandyRemington]

One theory is that the paradox animals might be chimeras - sort of the opposite of identical twins, two non-identical siblings that merged into one. Chimeras might be fairly common in ball pythons for some reason and only now that we have lots of clutch variety do we notice it. When two normals merge into one you wouldn't see where one ends and the other starts but albino with piebald shows. No telling which sibling has the reproductive organs. Maybe could even turn out that each sibling could have one of the testis/ovaries. I’ve heard that male snakes alternate which hemipene they use for successive locks but I’m not sure if each hemipene connects to only one testis but if they did and both siblings where male it could bred as an albino one lock and a piebald the next.

[paulh]

I have dissected some snakes. As far as I could tell, each testis connected to only one hemipenis.

In a chimera, both testes could belong to only one member of the chimera, one testis could belong to one and the other testis to the other, or there could be a mixture in one or both testes. So a chimera could be proven homozygous albino or heterozygous albino by breeding test. Or even normal if one member of a paradox albino chimera was genotypically homozygous normal.

Recently I happened across some material on double yolked eggs in pigeons. They seem more likely to be produced in large, well-fed birds. Birds of smaller breeds and less well-fed birds of all breeds seem less likely to produce double yolked eggs. A chimera would hatch from a double yolked egg. And royal pythons in captivity are generally fatter than their wild cousins.

[RandyRemington]

Thanks, I had wondered if since they had two hemipenes if each connected directly to it’s own testis. I had to actually look up if they had two testis or ovaries and found an interesting thing that the right one is supposed to always be closer to the head than the left.

To take the chimera theory a step further (and as far as I know it's just an unproven theory of what MIGHT be going on with the paradox animals), what about the 50% of the time where the siblings would be different genders? Any reason those babies couldn't be expected to hatch? Suppose it would depend on the particulars of who got what parts if they could reproduce as either sex.