I stopped selling my Gargoyles offspring because they looked off to me … my little elephant skinned babies is what I call them …Recently sent skin samples to the local University and they identified them as a soft scale mutation , The identification was Done By Dr Bricknell of the Zoology Dept at University Of Maine.
He said it’s similar to soft scale in Crested Gecko, thought it was a new mutation as he has not heard of it in Gargoyles…
Can anyone confirm that soft scale had not been seen in Gargoyles? Thanks for any information
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There’s a scaleless morph in gargoyles. I don’t know much about it except that they reportedly had shedding issues and a high mortality rate.
It could be like in beardies maybe? The ‘leatherback’ is the single gene for scaleless. Maybe something similar here?
Here’s a photo of the scaleless garg
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Soft scale is still kind of debated in crested geckos afaik, some believe it’s a thing, some believe it’s two different traits that have been mistakenly thought to be one due to often being found in the same lines, similar to how phantoms were known as phantom pinstripes once, so the professor saying that it’s like in crested geckos is a bit weird to me, since as far as im aware, there are animals with scale spacing that don’t look much different from normals, and animals that look stereotypically “soft scale” without having any difference in scalation. That being said, i haven’t heard of anything like it in gargs personally, not as invested in their morphs as i am in cresties tho
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Thanks… I will have to research this scaleless Garg morph. I am familiar with and am not a fan of the Gene in Bearded Dragons. Actually, not a fan of scaleless in any of the reptiles. I am actually in debate on continuing this line at all.
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Yeah it’s definitely sounds like a potential issue from what that particular breeder said. That is probably why it seems so hard to find more info.
I guess the question is if your line is just going to throw this soft/micro scaled appearance like yours from time to time…or if two of these wrinkly little guys are bred together do they make a scaleless. And that’s when the line is discontinued in whatever pairings seem to produce it.
