Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Misha View Post
Check out this sticky for a crash course in genetics which will answer your question regarding hets vs possible hets.

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52847
Unfortunately, the pictures in that link are wrong. That is a pretty common mistake in herper genetics web pages.

I prefer the Genetics Home Reference, which can be freely downloaded. http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook

I just wish that when the GHR showed an X-shaped chromosome, they had made it clear that the chromosome is in the process of dividing into two rod-shaped chromosomes.

Here is a more accurate version (IMO) of the text in the "HOW DOES ALL THIS WORK?" section of http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52847:

HOW DOES ALL THIS WORK?

Picture a pair of shoestrings. Hold them up side-by-side. Now picture each shoestring run through colored balls, like a string of beads.

There are two chromosomes. Each string of beads represents the DNA strand in a single rod-shaped chromosome.

Each bead represents a single gene or allele.

A bead in one string and the corresponding bead in the other string represent a pair of genes/alleles located at a specific locus.