what does het mean?

i see it alot on this forum.

there are some morphs that are recessive, like albino, clown, pied... This means that when the visual morph is breed to a normal all of the babies will look normal, but carry a single copy of the gene. With recessive morphs you need both copies of the gene to make a visual. Het stands for heterozygous which is the scientific term. So to summarize, het means the animal carries half of the needed genetic code to make what it is het for.

You will also see possible hets, usually 50% or 66%. This means that it is only possibly het. This happens when you breed 2 hets together, this makes the 66% het, because 2 out of 3 of the non-visuals should statistically be hets, or when you breed a het to a non het, this makes the 50% het because half of the babies should statistically be hets.

x2. only thing i would add is that no snake can be anything other than 50% or 66% het for any trait. if it's sold as 100% het, it should be guaranteed to be heterozygous for that specific recessive gene.

Genes come in pairs of 2. Heterozygous (aka het) means that the 2 genes are different. Homozygous means the 2 genes are the same. You will only typically see het used when talking about recessive morphs, because a recessive morph only visually shows in the homozygous form (meaning having two copies of the gene). In heterozygous it looks like the normal type, but still carries 1 copy of the gene.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wwmjkd

x2. only thing i would add is that no snake can be anything other than 50% or 66% het for any trait.

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breed a 50% to a normal, the offspring are 25%, breed a 66% to a normal and the offspring are 33%. You don't see them a lot in ball pythons but other snakes you do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OhhWatALoser

Genes come in pairs of 2. Heterozygous (aka het) means that the 2 genes are different. Homozygous means the 2 genes are the same. You will only typically see het used when talking about recessive morphs, because a recessive morph only visually shows in the homozygous form (meaning having two copies of the gene). In heterozygous it looks like the normal type, but still carries 1 copy of the gene.



breed a 50% to a normal, the offspring are 25%, breed a 66% to a normal and the offspring are 33%. You don't see them a lot in ball pythons but other snakes you do.

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I stand corrected. there do exist hets in lesser percentages, but in the BP trade you will rarely, if ever, see whets for sale that are less than 50%.

/sigh

i still have a lot to learn...
At least in my Electrical Engineering curriculum there isn't biology :D

don't worry, this is a common question, to make this easy to understand I will use an example. if you breed a normal BP with an albino BP then the offspring would be het albino! this is because the normal BP gave half of it's genes and the albino gave half of theirs, when the two halves mix together it becomes a het! now if you breed the het offspring with another het albino, there is a chance you will get a het albino, or if the two snakes give their het albino halves! you get an FULL ALBINO!! if this is still a bit confusing I recomend this video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcm1...u4m1uC&index=1

This thread is over 9yrs old and the OP hasn’t been on here in 8.5yrs...


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