het appearance question???....should be interesting

so many are asking around about hets....how can you tell if an animal is a het seems to be the most likely question. i would like to get opinions on what hets are TRULY visible. i mean without a doubt, hey look thats a het becasue.....and be sure to tell why.

for example, het pieds have the funny belly pattern right along the sides of the belly. but this only happens sometimes so i would throw it out.....well kinda. unless it came from a pied parent.

Co-doms have fairly noticeable hets :D

Yellow belly is a visual Het

Pastel is a Visual Het

If you think about it....Mojo's Lessers and Butters are Hets as well

For simple recessive, the best way to tell is to buy offspring from someone that bred a visual to something else; for example, an albino to a normal or an albino to a het. This is the only way to be sure that the het is a het.

To he best of my knowledge, there is no sure fire way to tell a simple recessive het by appearance. I do own a couple of het pied females, and they do have the het pied marker, but I have heard that some do not.

You can't just look at an animal and say "oh yeah, that's a het" (and I'm only talking recessives here). But if someone tells you that, "this is a het albino", you can usually tell. They have this look to them that's kind of hard to describe. But like Pieds, it's not a 100% marker; it's just a "family trait".

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Originally Posted by bait4snake

You can't just look at an animal and say "oh yeah, that's a het" (and I'm only talking recessives here). But if someone tells you that, "this is a het albino", you can usually tell. They have this look to them that's kind of hard to describe. But like Pieds, it's not a 100% marker; it's just a "family trait".

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i fully agree. i think people but too much weight on markers in general.

ive also herd/seen people state that there are markers for axanthics?!?! are there any (and i like that work you used) family traits for axanthic?

also i kinda agree on a yellow belly being a het but as for pastel....not really. not doggin you patrick your cool....even though your emo and hate your life!

Pastels het for axanthic look much different than a normal pastel. They have less yellow (hypoxanthic?).

Take the het... look closly at it... and then thank Adam or Ralph for the wonderful new snake:)

If you look at doms or codoms het for pied they have an odd look to them.

You people are grasping at straws. If a het is visibly different than a normal it is not a recessive...it would be a dominant or co-dom trait.
There are no "markers" for recessives.
-Steven

I don't doubt that there are text book recessive mutations where the normal allele completely and always covers the mutant allele in the hets. But I also think ball pythons don't read those text books and there is some gray area between classic recessive and co-dominant and some morphs that we decided to call recessive fall into that gray area. Maybe there is a simple Mendelian explanation like different alleles that all get lumped together as normal but with different levels of dominance with their mutant allele. Or maybe more complicated genetics involving penetrance and expressivity are coming into play.

Most people seem to like things cut and dry. We want everything to fall into one neat classification or another. We want to consider a possible het a normal because it's simpler than living in that gray area between proven het and known normal. And we sure don't know what to do with a "recessive" mutation like piebald with sporadic co-dominant tendencies. It’s the sporadic part that really complicates things.