is there a lethal gene?

[RandyRemington]

Can you tell me more about this spider problem? I was considering getting a spider tobreed with my pastel,now I am a little nervous about it!!

A homozygous lethal mutation isn't necessarily a problem when you only work with heterozygous animals.

As far as I know, womas (the heterozygous version of that mutation) do just fine and make nice combos. I don't actually have any womas of my own but haven't heard of them being problem animals. It's the homozygous version (pearl) that you want to avoid making but that's easy enough; just don't breed two womas together.

It does turn out that spiders (most and maybe all are heterozygous for the spider mutation) have this tendency to flip their heads upside down but they can still be great feeders and breeders so it doesn't seem to bother most of them much at all. Breeding a spider to a pastel you have no chance of making a homozygous spider so even if spider does turn out to be a homozygous lethal mutation it doesn't mater in that breeding. The rumors of surviving homozygous spiders might even be true but if so you have to wonder why the owner(s) haven't gone public with their proven homozygous spiders. I strongly suspect that spider is homozygous lethal but it’s really hard to prove something by it’s absence so we might never know for sure.