My het hypo female also sheds patterend but her and her het father are both a couple shades brighter than normal as were right around half of the 50% chance het clutch I picked her out of. When I got her father about 10 years ago it was right after I first heard of some het hypos shedding clear so when I picked him up I asked the breeder who was specializing in the hypo gene if he had hets that shed clear. It just happened to be cleaning day and he want through his racks and found several clear sheds from het hypos. So I don't know how common it is but some het hypos are close enough to they hypo end of the scale to shed clear.
Last year I lucked out with my het OG*het OG clutch and only got 4 66% hets. Out of interest I checked them over the other day to see if I could decide which were actual hets as the hets from this line do tend to show orange. I picked out 2 that I thought were hets (showing orange on their heads etc), 1 probably not (much duller and no sign of orange) and 1 maybe (intermediate). For interest I put them all in 1 box, showed them to my OH and asked him to have a go at picking out the hets. He immediately pulled out the dull one and said not that one; he then picked out the 2 that I thought were as likely hets, hesitated over the last one and plumped for it not being het. Very interesting as he is not a python keeper and can't recognise a lot of mine, although he has seen the visuals from this line. I am keeping these anyway and it will be interesting to see which ones do eventually prove to be hets as it would be nice to be able to pick the most likely hets from the clutches. Interestingly the anecdotal information on the ghost line is that the hets are the best feeders and the most likely two are indeed the biggest.
You can guess at a het ghost from the colour, light/brightness, maybe even from the sheds (although that certainly doesn't hold out with my known proven ghost hets) but IMHO the belly pattern has nothing at all to do with being het or not. I think that you can tell some hets but certainly not all. From my het pair I think that a lot of people would guess at the female being het for ghost but I don't think that anyone would guess that the male was just from looking at him. Apart from the visuals all of my babies are very dark granite type animals, albeit that some show orange through this, so I will be fascinated to see how they breed.
What will be very interesting will be for people to come back and report how the guestimate hets (and their sibs) breed out over time-that would be useful information, even if possibly only for the line that they have.
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Originally Posted by Capray
Here is her belly. Not clean but not totally speclkled like my other normals.
