Ivory/Albino Paradox? Chimera? What is this thing?

I'm the operations manager at The Gourmet Rodent. We currently produce about 2500 clutches a year of ball pythons so are pretty accustomed to seeing new and strange things pop up, but this one probably takes the cake. This snake was produced from the following pairing:

Dam: Yellowbelly
Possible Sires: Fire Yellowbelly or Ivory

The dam's previous breeding record includes two previous clutches:
2012 bred to Fire
2013 bred to Desert Yellowbelly, Specter, and Enchi Spark

We initially thought some sort of paradox/chimerism due to a potentially unknown albino het, but that doesn't explain dark eyes on a seemingly albino head. If you look closely, the "white" sections show the ivory spine striping.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil.../8/7/wtfbp.jpg

Any ideas?!

Nicole

I have absolutely no idea, I'm God awful @ morph IDs but shes stunning! She's almost making me like yellow [emoji23][emoji13][emoji169]

1.0 Normal
Normal doesn't mean boring! [emoji4]

wow, i have absolutely no clue but holy heck is that a beautiful animal.

I am going to say paradox. You can see yellows and blues in the backstripe on the one section which says to me there is yellowbelly complex there. True oddness surrounding the abino coloring with no albino involved.

Really interesting!

Possible both parents were het albino?
What were the sibling?

Regardless that is one gorgeous paradox! Lovely! thanks for sharing

After a little more thought, I am thinking Fire/Yellow Belly/ het Albino paradox. Absolutely no way to be sure though. LOL. I don't see a way that animal is not at least het albino. Flipping awesome animal.

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Originally Posted by AbsoluteApril

Possible both parents were het albino?
What were the sibling?

Regardless that is one gorgeous paradox! Lovely! thanks for sharing

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It's possible there are hidden albino genes we aren't aware of but that still doesn't explain the dark eyes, which are the weirdest part of the whole thing for me.

Siblings are totally as expected: yellowbellies, ivories, etc

It certainly brings to mind this snake.

She is absolutely stunning. She looks like a work of art.

Wow! I bet she will just get better and better with age!

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Originally Posted by nicolerc

I'm the operations manager at The Gourmet Rodent. We currently produce about 2500 clutches a year of ball pythons so are pretty accustomed to seeing new and strange things pop up, but this one probably takes the cake. This snake was produced from the following pairing:

Dam: Yellowbelly
Possible Sires: Fire Yellowbelly or Ivory

The dam's previous breeding record includes two previous clutches:
2012 bred to Fire
2013 bred to Desert Yellowbelly, Specter, and Enchi Spark

We initially thought some sort of paradox/chimerism due to a potentially unknown albino het, but that doesn't explain dark eyes on a seemingly albino head. If you look closely, the "white" sections show the ivory spine striping.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil.../8/7/wtfbp.jpg

Any ideas?!

Nicole

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Simply beautiful !


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I don't know - but I want!

Gorgeous!!! Congrats!!

Whoa almost has a pied affect too. So so cool.

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So leucism and albinism are somewhat "related" with leucys having some pigment and retaining dark eyes. Is it possible that somehow one of the Leucy genes did it's thing but was missing or had an extra marker that allowed the orange to pop?

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Originally Posted by chakup

So leucism and albinism are somewhat "related" with leucys having some pigment and retaining dark eyes. Is it possible that somehow one of the Leucy genes did it's thing but was missing or had an extra marker that allowed the orange to pop?

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Slight tangent but I've got a pair of brilliant white , Luicistic Texas Rat snakes but the female has red eyes and the male seems to have blue eyes ... What's going on there I wonder ?

This is crazy! I definitely see the ivory. Maybe it's the lighting but the eyes look darker than ivory eyes, which can look black but are a very dark blue with dark red pupils. Those eyes look more like super fire eyes to me. But the orange pattern on white looks like albino!

Any chance the dam could be fire too?

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Originally Posted by chakup

So leucism and albinism are somewhat "related" with leucys having some pigment and retaining dark eyes. Is it possible that somehow one of the Leucy genes did it's thing but was missing or had an extra marker that allowed the orange to pop?

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Leucism and albinism are not particularly related; the prior is a dysfunction in the deposition of pigmentation (but all pigments are still produced) while the latter is a failure to produce the dark pigment, melanin. So this is not the result of a leucism gene going rogue.

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Originally Posted by nicolerc

It's possible there are hidden albino genes we aren't aware of but that still doesn't explain the dark eyes, which are the weirdest part of the whole thing for me.

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For my money, what you have is a case where both parents were carrying the Albino allele and your animal is most likely a chimera. The Albino sections are AlbinoYB (which also accounts for the yellow head) and the Ivory portions are just that: Ivory. And the dark eyes are derived from them originating from Ivory lineage cells

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Originally Posted by nicolerc

Siblings are totally as expected: yellowbellies, ivories, etc

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With regard to the siblings, was there Fire in any of them and/or were any of them WT? Just want to see if we can pin down who exactly dad was.

wow it's beautiful! ISOWANTTHAT! Paradox/Chimera's are awesome! u guys at GR aer producing some unique animals: https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...radox-Highway) :gj:

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Originally Posted by Zincubus

Slight tangent but I've got a pair of brilliant white , Luicistic Texas Rat snakes but the female has red eyes and the male seems to have blue eyes ... What's going on there I wonder ?

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That one is easy enough: your female is both leucistic and amelanistic. Often called "pink eyed leucistic."

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Originally Posted by greco

This is crazy! I definitely see the ivory. Maybe it's the lighting but the eyes look darker than ivory eyes, which can look black but are a very dark blue with dark red pupils. Those eyes look more like super fire eyes to me. But the orange pattern on white looks like albino!

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Originally Posted by greco

Any chance the dam could be fire too?

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The eyes are very dark with red pupils. I do not believe the dam could be fire.

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Originally Posted by Zincubus

For my money, what you have is a case where both parents were carrying the Albino allele and your animal is most likely a chimera. The Albino sections are AlbinoYB (which also accounts for the yellow head) and the Ivory portions are just that: Ivory. And the dark eyes are derived from them originating from Ivory lineage cells


With regard to the siblings, was there Fire in any of them and/or were any of them WT? Just want to see if we can pin down who exactly dad was.

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This is close to what we believe as well, but it's obviously less likely that both parents are hidden hets rather than just one or the other. I'm not sure if there were fire siblings or not, but it shouldn't matter if there were. She was bred to both males and siblings could have been sired by either.

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Originally Posted by Ax01

wow it's beautiful! ISOWANTTHAT! Paradox/Chimera's are awesome! u guys at GR aer producing some unique animals:

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I thought of that highway too when I saw this hatchling, so I went back and checked the records but they aren't directly related (different sires/dams).

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Originally Posted by nicolerc

This is close to what we believe as well, but it's obviously less likely that both parents are hidden hets rather than just one or the other.

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While it may be less likely that both parents were unknown hets it is even more unlikely that you would see a case of a mosaic with regionalized alternating monoallelism happening so that you get patches that are entirely Albino/YB and patches that are entirely non-Albino/Ivory but no patches that are non-Albino/YB or Albino/Ivory

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Originally Posted by nicolerc

I'm not sure if there were fire siblings or not, but it shouldn't matter if there were. She was bred to both males and siblings could have been sired by either.

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Superficially, yes it does not matter. But, if in all the other siblings there are no Fire or WT then the statistical odds of this one animal being from a different sire are much reduced. And if you can pin down the likely father then you can consider proving it out as het Albino at some later date.

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Originally Posted by asplundii

While it may be less likely that both parents were unknown hets it is even more unlikely that you would see a case of a mosaic with regionalized alternating monoallelism happening so that you get patches that are entirely Albino/YB and patches that are entirely non-Albino/Ivory but no patches that are non-Albino/YB or Albino/Ivory

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For those of us that are big word challenged (like me), are you saying that it is more likely the both parents were het albino since there appears to be a lack of pattern consistent with a normal patterned animal?

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Originally Posted by JodanOrNoDan

For those of us that are big word challenged (like me), are you saying that it is more likely the both parents were het albino since there appears to be a lack of pattern consistent with a normal patterned animal?

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LOL... Sorry, I lapsed into jargon there didn't I? Let me try again.

In a mosaic-type paradox, you have a situation where one of the alleles in the pair "drops out" so you see the effect on the allele that is left (this is called monoallelism). So, if we imagine a simple case of an animal that is WT het Albino, if the WT allele "drops out" all that is left is the Albino allele and the tissue patches in the "drop out" area will look Albino.

Now, if we posit that this animal here is a mosaic and not a chimera then genetically the animal would have to be a Yellowbelly het Albino and we would be seeing the Ivory phenotype from "drop out" of the WT allele at the YB locus and the Albino phenotype from "drop out" of the WT allele at the Albino locus. But you would not see these two separate and independent "drop out" events happening in an alternating pattern giving perfect, discreet regions of each. Instead, we would a more chaotic distribution of "drop outs" where some regions would be phenotypically YB, some areas would be AlbinoYB, some areas would be Ivory, and some areas would be Albino Ivory. We do not see the first and last of those phenotypes in this animal.

Flipside, if we posit that the animal here is a chimera then what you have is a case where there was a fusion event between an AlbinoYB zygote and an Ivory zygote which very easily gives rise to the two discreet and delineated phenotype regions that we are seeing.


Does that make more sense than my earlier gibberish?

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Originally Posted by asplundii

Does that make more sense than my earlier gibberish?

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LOL. yeah. you did a pretty good job, thank you. It is sometimes very hard to describe things in layman's terms so I appreciate the effort. I have the same problem when trying to describe engineering concepts.