If you talk to bhb again see if you can get him to elaborate on that. Doesn't he fell that he can tell which babies are chocolates and which aren't?
I wonder if he just meant that it can sometimes be subtle. Maybe you can't always be 100% sure but I think that there is a classic chocolate look that when seen can be recognized. That is to say that some chocolates are obviously different than normals but others maybe look more normal but could still produce a homozygous chocolate proving they aren’t normal.
I haven't seen enough pictures to be an authority by any means but I think it has something to do with the width of the dark areas and also the rich chocolate color that might not always photograph well. There has also been mention of the belly checkering but I'm not sure if that is 100%. Is the white around the black a tendency or not in the two recognized chocolate lines (BHB and Bell)? I thought I read of an example of a super chocolate from crossing those two lines so that would be nice to have confirmed compatibility (might actually have to wait until that super reproduces to be totally sure). I've never heard where either of those lines started so maybe they came from the same place all along for all I know.
I’d post some pictures of my founding Garcia girl and one of her daughters both of which might be genetically the same as the standard chocolate (i.e. heterozygous for the gene if Garcia turns out to be chocolate) and neither of which look at all normal to me but since I don’t even know if they are the same as chocolate yet I don’t want to cloud the issue. Anyone got some pictures of proven line chocolates to post for this discussion?
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