Caramel Albino Question

[Pythonfriend]

basically BPs just have more different pigments than humans do, and for the definition its good enough if one is knocked out. which gives you a variety of things that can justifyably be called albinos, while in humans or animals that mainly only have one pigment there only is one albino version.

you knock out the black pigment and its an albino, which leaves you with a white pigment, a yellow pigment, and a light brown pigment.

judging from the optics, i would say albinos have the white and the yellow one. lavender albinos only have the yellow one which causes the skin to get translucent and the color of the blood makes the lavender hues. and toffe and candy and caramels have white, yellow, and light brown.

oh and.... if you get rid of all pigments you would not get a white snake with red eyes, the really white ones really have a lot of white pigment in the skin. With everything gone, it should look pinkish/lavendery with red eyes.

[Snake Den]

I stand corrected. I was merely repeated what I was taught about snakes in school, our professor used albino snakes as an example and taught us that the reptile world terminology was wrong. Turns out he was wrong, and I was wrong for not doing the followup research... so I started reading and it turns out snakes have three different pigments...

"Albinism in amphibians and reptiles can result in patterned skin in white, yellow or red. The color pattern of a normal corn snake is a mixture of black, red and white. In a corn snake lacking melanin (amelanistic) a red and white skin results. This is because amphibians and reptiles possess three types of chromataphores (pigment cells): melanophores, xanthophores and iridophores, in a similar skin structure to that of frogs. Melanophores contain brown or black pigments (melanin). Xanthophores contain red and yellow pigments. Iridophores contain crystals, which diffract the light, resulting in iridescence or scattering. In albinism the melanin is gone, and so the black pigment is removed and the snake appears red and white. The other pigments can also be affected by genetic conditions, resulting in a range of color combinations. Amphibians and reptiles can display a wide variety of color defects stemming from inherited deficiencies, or defects in the chemical process of making pigments." -http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7I.html

Anyway, it is an interesting topic

...and just found this interesting too... same webpage

"Leucism is sometimes mistaken for albinism, but leucism is a condition characterized by reduced pigmentation in animals. It affects all pigments, not just melanin, and animals with leucism have normal eye color, while animals with albinism tend to have red eyes."

So white is not a pigment on its own, but a reduction of the three pigments that are already present...?

[Pythonfriend]

"Iridophores contain crystals, which diffract the light, resulting in iridescence or scattering."

my wild guess would be, since BPs dont show iridescence, that these could be the white ones.

anyway i reckon there must be something, because there is a visual difference between the extremely white piebald white, and the translucent skin of some BELs and lavender albinos, where color from tissue and blood comes through.

some have so translucent skin that as hatchlings you can see the black of their eyeballs through the top of their head. but not with an all-white pied, that white is intransparent. ive also seen cases of white patterning on top of the translucency.

look at the second and third picture here:
http://www.worldofballpythons.com/morphs/leche/ thats white on translucent, also you see the eyeballs shine through the head.

for comparison:
http://www.worldofballpythons.com/morphs/lesser-pied/

But you corrected me on one thing (maybe), i believed there to be a brown pigment that is seperate from the black one. if there is only one, that is brown in low concentrations and black in high concentrations, how do you make medium grey or light grey? but then, maybe the brown is a mix of yellow and black, and if you remove the yellow you get the greys.

[WifeOfSlasher]

I'd like to add this little tidbit...

True blue eyes are the result of a complete lack of pigment in the irises.

[RandyRemington]

i would just call them caramel, problem solved.

many people simply call the gene caramel, and now when people say "caramel albino" other people might get confused and wonder: is it just a caramel, or a double-recessive caramel + albino?

Yes, seems I've not seen "caramel" with the original "albino" part lately. Names usually change to avoid confusion over time. For example lesser platinum to just lesser, jungle pastel to just pastel.

[Archimedes]

Fascinating read guys, I have not much else to add but I learned a lot scanning this thread.