Lets talk lesser and butters

[LadyOhh]

Nope

[blackcrystal22]

Nope

DARN FACES.
You should give us a hint. ;]

[Royalherper]

To me, butters and lessers seem to be basically different lines of the same morph, similar to pastels. Sometimes they look different, and their supers look a fair bit different, but the genes react in a similar fashion.

yep, gotta agree with that.

[Brimstone111888]

To me, butters and lessers seem to be basically different lines of the same morph, similar to pastels. Sometimes they look different, and their supers look a fair bit different, but the genes react in a similar fashion.

I also have to agree with you, but I also throwing this out there aswell. I think all three(Mojave,Butter, Lesser) are all the same morph with various lines.

The range is huge in coloration and pattern between Mojave, Butter, Lesser complex, but this is widely accepted in the pastel morph with various lines that all look very different. I have seen some screaming pastels, with some that I can barely tell is a pastel.

Not to mention the fact very few people can identify a Mojave, butter, or lesser with 100% certainty and get it correct. Also I have never gotten an answer on the breeding of Mojave X Lesser producing BEL's. To me thats the nail in the coffin.

What I think would be good for the snake community would be to just make them under one name and just go by quality, but I think there are too many people who would cry about losing tons of money form their high priced butters/ and some lessers.

[Wh00h0069]

Nope

So whats the verdict?? Which is which??

[Beardedragon]

I also have to agree with you, but I also throwing this out there aswell. I think all three(Mojave,Butter, Lesser) are all the same morph with various lines.

The range is huge in coloration and pattern between Mojave, Butter, Lesser complex, but this is widely accepted in the pastel morph with various lines that all look very different. I have seen some screaming pastels, with some that I can barely tell is a pastel.

Not to mention the fact very few people can identify a Mojave, butter, or lesser with 100% certainty and get it correct. Also I have never gotten an answer on the breeding of Mojave X Lesser producing BEL's. To me thats the nail in the coffin.

What I think would be good for the snake community would be to just make them under one name and just go by quality, but I think there are too many people who would cry about losing tons of money form their high priced butters/ and some lessers.

Anyone can tell a mojave apart from a butter and lesser, its when it comes down to telling butters and lessers apart. To me, butters are less appealing, they get worse with age and lessers seem to keep their cool colors( BUt they both have their better/worse sides). If you cant tell a mojave apart from a lesser or butter, either you have one ugly lesser or butter or need new glasses

[Brimstone111888]

Anyone can tell a mojave apart from a butter and lesser, its when it comes down to telling butters and lessers apart. To me, butters are less appealing, they get worse with age and lessers seem to keep their cool colors( BUt they both have their better/worse sides). If you cant tell a mojave apart from a lesser or butter, either you have one ugly lesser or butter or need new glasses

There are various degrees of mojave and I doubt you could pick out a great looking mojave in a pile of lessers or butters. I still think its funny how nobody thinks that Lesser + Mojave producing Blue-eyed Leucistics is anything to take a look at . Right in Kevin's book(page 198)

To me they are all the same and definitely in a few years they will be.

[dr del]

Ooo,

Can I have a go?

[random morph guesser]



[/random morph guesser]

I can tell an albino from a normal about 50% of the time (and that's me improving).


dr del

[Beardedragon]

There are various degrees of mojave and I doubt you could pick out a great looking mojave in a pile of lessers or butters. I still think its funny how nobody thinks that Lesser + Mojave producing Blue-eyed Leucistics is anything to take a look at . Right in Kevin's book(page 198)

To me they are all the same and definitely in a few years they will be.

So can a het vin russo, and it looks normal

Everyone that has had a go at the picture has been right about the mojave. Maybe you should go put a picture of a mojave up to a lesser or butter to see?

Maybe in the future if you put a super nice mojave up to a super ugly lesser you could get them mixed up. I love mojaves, but they look nothing like the other two.

[RandyRemington]

There are 3 basic categories to describe the relationship between two named single gene morphs (and I believe mojave, lesser, and butter have all proven they are single gene by keeping 50% odds through lots of outbreeding).

1. Different mutations of different genes. An example would be pastel and cinnamon. They make a cool combo (pewter) but breeding results like producing super pastel cinnamon and super cinnamon pastel prove they aren't the same gene.

2. Same mutation of the same gene. This one is a little harder to prove but it seems likely that say lemon pastel and Graziani pastel are the same mutation of the same gene. If there are consistent differences between the pure lines it could be due to other genes line bred in.

3. Different mutations of the same gene. This is a concept that might be new to some but seems to be what is going on with the lesser white snake complex. Just like you can have two versions of the same gene, say albino and normal for albino, you can also have more than two. The gene at the location of the lesser mutation seems to have several different mutant versions/alleles. It looks like Lesser, Mojave, Phantom, Vin Russo, Mocha, and apparently the Hidden mutation that combines with Lesser to make Phantom are all different versions of the same gene. I don't know if Butter is the exact same version as Lesser or if they are distinct different versions like Lesser and Mojave but just happen to look closer together. But even without counting Butter separate from Lesser there are at least 6 and perhaps many more distinctly different mutant versions of this gene. Why it should be so variable I don’t know.

This third category is part way between the first two. The different alleles can still be have very different appearances like say Hidden that looks completely normal when paired with the normal version of this gene and Lesser that is pretty extreme when paired with normal. But there is a relationship between them because they are versions of the same gene. For example, a leucistic from Lesser X Mojave can't pass both mutations on to the same offspring because each only gets one copy of any one gene from each parent. So while pewter X normal has a chance to produce more pewters a cross line leucistic X normal can't produce more leucistics (but also can't produce any normals).