Ghost Theory

I was looking at different morphs and such that are het ghost, and ive noticed that they are all colorful and "weird" in a good way. now, my theory is along with the hooks ( like pied markers, because they can be there and sometimes not) is that het ghosts really lighten up the morphs. I say this because I was looking at lesser thinking how odd it was that he has kept his colors so well, and I started to look him over and there are the hooks! I'm not saying he is anything, and I do plan to pair him with a ghost or hypo in the future as a dinker project, but does anyone else see where I am coming from?

Personally, I do! Although you will be told that there is no physical marker to tell hets from normals, I believe otherwise. We've seen many recessive morphs come from people line breeding "odd" looking snakes. I do see a common connection with lighter colored snakes and het hypo. I'm a "dinking" fanatic, and I will be attempting to decipher some of these traits and correlating them with hets. It might have already been done, or I might be wasting my time, but I am just dead curious.

So yeah, I def. see where you are coming from!

The whole idea with the hooks is that it's a sign that the animal is het for something. Keep in mind that a co-dom morph IS a het. The super form is homozygous. In this case, a lesser is the heterozygous form of the BEL. As for het hypo's being lighter colored snakes, this could just be coming from selective breeding. The idea would be to use light-colored hets to produce hypo's that are brighter and don't darken up as much with age. Which in turn would end up producing more light colored hets when bred.

Not much to go on but when I drove down to get my original het hypo it happened to be cleaning day. I had recently seen post about a HET hypo shedding clear so asked the guy about it and he went through his cages and sure enough found some clear sheds from het hypo (in addition to the expected clear sheds in homozygous hypo). My het did not shed clear but was nice and bright. Half his offspring the one time I did breed him where distinctly brighter than the other half but wouldn't you know only one of those where female. But, the one 50% chance het hypo female I did keep was the bright one. If she does turn out to be het could still just be luck. As suggested the bright could be an unrelated gene bred in to hypo lines but if it is the hypo gene showing through some times it wouldn't be the first time we've seen a "recessive" mutation with sporadic co-dom tendencies.

I can't say if all het hypo's are lighter or not but mine sure is. She is one of the lightest females I have. Her shed is pretty close to clear as well.

The breeder I got my female pastel het hypo from told me that you can tell the difference between pastels that are het hypo and ones that aren't. I do not know how true this is, but she certainly looks different from most other pastels I have seen. Not only is she lighter and a 'softer' sort of yellow, she also has a lot of blushing and the 'hook' everyone talks about. Here is a picture that shows her color, the hook (in the right of the picture near where her head dips under her), and her, and another picture that shows how faded her head is:

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...nanaStorm6.jpg

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...nanaMacro2.jpg

I also have her recently acquired boyfriend, a baby mojave het for hypo. As far as I can tell he looks like a fairly normal mojo, except his blushing is a really light color. He also had the mythical 'hook.' His hook is on his neck. Also, his eyes are a really odd color:

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...ickAlbum/J.jpg

I definatly know what you mean. My female het. ghost does not look like a normal to me. There is something different about her.

Someone mentioned het for pie. My hypo has a little white splotch on his side. I was surprised when I saw it. Does that indicate that maybe he is het pied?

As an addition to HypoPita's post, here is a picture of our Hypo. The white spot is visible on the upper right side. It's not big, but it is very noticeable in person.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...88/Chester.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by adizziedoll

Personally, I do! Although you will be told that there is no physical marker to tell hets from normals, I believe otherwise. We've seen many recessive morphs come from people line breeding "odd" looking snakes. I do see a common connection with lighter colored snakes and het hypo. I'm a "dinking" fanatic, and I will be attempting to decipher some of these traits and correlating them with hets. It might have already been done, or I might be wasting my time, but I am just dead curious.

So yeah, I def. see where you are coming from!

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You saying this makes me reeeaelly hopeful. Because my female possible het hypo is VERY light for a normal.

And my pastel male is one of the lighter/brighter of the choices. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HypoPita

Someone mentioned het for pie. My hypo has a little white splotch on his side. I was surprised when I saw it. Does that indicate that maybe he is het pied?

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White spots aren't generally markers for het pied - so most likely, no.