Quote Originally Posted by rabernet View Post
Bengal is Kevin's line of genetic reduced patterns. It looks sort of like a dirty enchi to me. He had a Bengal/Pastel that I thought was an enchi pastel.
Thanks for the info; sounds like my kind of morph (I really dig banded/reduced pattern animals ...)

Others have raised a great point about the ability to distinguish what's in some multi-gene animals ... Some of these "mystery balls" look amazing, but some (to my way of thinking) are a waste of time to breed when the four gene animal looks nearly indistinguishable from an animal with three out of the same four genes.

I think the other problem is that there are clearly some mutations that will most likely "mask" anything else they're paired with -- homozygous lessers, for example. They might be powerhouses for breeding purposes, but at the same time, I like to know what I'm breeding when I put two animals together (and I better know what I'm selling when I put a critter up for sale ..!)

I do think it's conceivable that there could come a point where the number of genes an animal carries becomes less important than its overall appearance -- ie, a crappy-looking spider-cinnamon-pastel-sable will be worth less than a phenomenal pastel that, through generations of selective breeding, is screaming highlighter yellow with black polka dots. I don't think we'll see that day for a very, very long time, though -- possibly several decades, IMO.