Bantam Corns: Possible New Mutation

Hard to tell from these pic angles, but the tails seem normal for their weight. There is an illusion of a smaller tail because of the thicker body, not dissimilar to the look of a normal female tail relative to a male’s. When I pop-sexed them at around 9g, there were no surprises regarding tail structure, hemipenes, or scent glands. All were as expected.

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Yes, it seems to kind of resemble this snake that was in the thread @noodlehaus mentioned.

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THAT is a stunted/short tail. None of these have that. :slight_smile:

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I am not nearly expert enough on corn snakes to really weigh in much here lol. I do hope these snakes are a new mutation and not a defect, i think it could be very interesting to see how they look when they’re adults! Good luck with them! Definitely excited to see more updates!

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Thanks! :slight_smile:

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At first glance they do look similar, but @deanaii’s “Bantams” have much longer and more normal-looking tails than the individual pictured there.

I’m definitely not an expert, I’d never even heard of SSS before @noodlehaus mentioned it up thread, so I couldn’t say if the look of the SSS individual there is at all related to these Bantams, but I definitely do see some outward physical differences, so hopefully the Bantams are different and don’t suffer any ill effects from their unusual appearance. Time will tell!

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General Records page for Frootloop, in case anyone is interested.

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So @deanaii I am banking on your 40 plus years of breeding knowledge. That certainly accounts for something.

I for one, and may be the only one, (bad bad old woman!) totally stand behind you and fully trust that you know what you are doing. My goodness, you have been breeding longer than some of the people here are old! But I digress!

I would not change a thing. Granted I have zero experience other than being a long time reptile keeper and a long time ago reptile vet assistant but for some reason I have faith in you and in your discretion.

Also, who cares what you name them. I name all my snakes after their breeders! So in a way it’s kinda free advertising! I happen to like Bantam. I know you have already named each baby but it would have been cool to give them chicken/rooster names! :joy:

People complain about so many ball python posts (there are truly WAY too many breeders and the market is saturated) but when something possibly new and different comes along, well……

So I will support you until I am proven wrong - in which case I will eat CROW

God bless you @deanaii

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@Caron

Thank you! :slight_smile:

We all have blind spots, so I definitely value all perspectives. If I ever sound defensive, it’s because I’m old and sentimental. “How could anyone imply that cute little Cookiecrisp should have been culled!!?” :laughing:

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I also agree. If they’re all doing fine, there’s no trouble to try to figure out what is going on here. Now if all of the babies had been sickly, that would have been different, but they’re all looking great, and I for one am really interested in seeing what happens here.

Edited because grammer’s hard.

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Yeah, I’m looking forward to their development too. :slight_smile:

Kinda crazy that this is their (non-Bantam) clutchmate sister, Louise. Shatter het Caramel:

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Amen to that! :heart:

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Well I am not only old, I am hard headed as well. I feel that if you brought these little guys into the world, whether intentional or unintentional, they deserve a chance to survive and thrive instead of an immediate prognosis of gloom and doom. And right now they are all thriving. None of us know if there will ever even be a tomorrow. Or a next week or a next year. So take each day as it comes and rejoice in the life of these little mysteries! :heart:

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Adding to the concerned group here.

When I mentioned how the older snakes looked bloated, it was glossed over and ignored. The reply mostly focused on the egg binding aspect I mentioned

That’s almost as much of a red flag as the breeders ignoring the kink rate in the lavs you mentioned. If you are not considered radiographs on these animals to verify that they are indeed physiologically normal, this is a very risky project for any to get involved in.

I don’t want to see this become something popular and then end up with animals that have shorter life spans or risks of females egg binding immediately because of the internal aspects.

You say scaleless is a defect …but it’s not affecting the internal structures of the body. This is.
Regardless of your experience, you do not have x-ray or ultrasound based abilities to judge how healthy these animals are. If these animals have enlarged hearts and a risk of heart or respiratory failure, how will that look as a new morph?
It could just end up on the lists of Do Not Breed like the Lemon Frost Leopard Geckos or Desert morph (Not Desert Ghost) ball pythons because the health risks are just too much and cruel.

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Our perspectives differ.

I should also point out that I bred the parents in their second year. They were from a big clutch sold by a very high volume breeder. And grandpa sired countless 50%ph Bantams, if the mutation is recessive. It is almost guaranteed that there will be pairings of other clutchmates, in other hands, starting this season. Whatever I decide to do will neither contain nor unleash the mutation itself. It’s out there!

Two points about Bantam vs Scaleless: there are no allegations of hybrid origin for Bantam. There are no special care requirements for Bantams. Every shed has been perfect and complete with my usual relatively dry setups. That’s about fifty perfect sheds in these five months since they hatched.

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It doesn’t contain it, no. But you are here playing it off as a possible new mutation under your name.

You should be doing your due diligence in making sure it is a viable and healthy mutation since you will be associated with this mutation now.

Edit: 5 months also doesn’t prove out the special care requirements yet. If there are indeed spinal calcifications, spinal degradation or internal issues, that will require special care in the end.

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Your opinion has been noted, whether I agree with it or not. Thanks for it! :slight_smile:

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I was referring to this




I am still really not sure on where I stand with this but I can’t help but want one :rofl:

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All I can tell you so that to the eye, without camera angle foreshortening, the tails are normal for their weights. :slight_smile:

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Personally, I think this is a good reason to work with them for a bit and find out how viable they are - are they able to reproduce without issue, will they be able to live normal snake lives? Then if the answer is no, the community as a whole can hopefully work on containing and eliminating it. When stargazer first popped up in sunkissed corns, I’m so glad that the breeders working with it were able to isolate the mutation, prove that it’s not inherently connected to sunkissed, prove that it’s recessive, and then nearly eliminate it from the gene pool by trading around known hets or homozygous stargazers to test breed to their unknowns. There are still some around that people use for test breeding and such, but nowadays, you can breed sunkissed without much worry about stargazer popping up because the original breeders of it did the work.

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