I love the mountain kingsnakes. They have always been my favorite in the colubrid family but the closest I ever came to having Mountain Kings was a few Blairs Phase Gray Bands. I worked with a lot of the regular forms years ago but never did Mountain Kings. I was thinking about getting a few. So I was perusing the MM classifieds and ran across this snake below.
It’s listed here on MM as Hypo Albino Arizona MK. I see the Hypo. However, I fail to see how this animal is Albino as well. I still see very small black specks where the banding should be and a big dark blotch on the head. Any comments? Maybe it’s Het Albino and they juat selected the wrong tag for it.
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That isn’t a hypo or albino. Looks like an applegate special. The banding also makes me think it isn’t pure AMK.
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Technically… this could be classified as “hypomelanistic” because it displays “less than” the normal amount of melanin-based pigmentation
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True. But according to hobbyists this morph would be applegate special. The only hypo that AMKs have that I am aware of (where it is actually called that) is hypo-E. So less red, not melanin.
Either way, this animal is being advertised incirrectly as both Hypo and Albino.
You can flag it on MM for being listed wrong.
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Sorry, yes, my apologies. In terms of the hobby nomenclature, yes it is not a Hypo. But in the broader sense of the word, it could be. I should have been clearer
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