Underwhelming or unexpected combos

Disclaimer first: I don’t want to offend anyone, that is never my intent in this lovely community nor anywhere really. I hope this just remains as a lighthearted topic about what you envisioned your offspring would look like vs. the unexpected/underwhelming result of the pairing. Beauty is absolutely in the eye of the beholder. I just was curious to hear of any stories our breeders have about this topic. Can be “unexpected” in the positive sense too!

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My most underwhelming combo result was the female reabsorbing… >_>
This year she has one heck of an ovulation going so fingers crossed… and hopefully one of the unexpected positives from her

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Last season (2023) I had paired my Mojave Twister boy to my DG Firefly Pinstripe female 6 times overall. However, I accidently added my Killer Batman to the tub one day (brain fart) and went to correct it and they were locked within a matter of 5 - 10 minutes. Guess who sired that clutch? The ******* killer batman. So I ended up making double het DG Clowns and I didn’t want them because I don’t care for that project lol

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Not unwelcome but very unexpected - my first intentional pairing was to a dinker female I thought might be carrying an extra het (had no idea what it was). Paired her with two different males - odyb fire pinstripe and enchi clown, no other genes. Got a normal and a surprise visual albino. Not only did she prove herself surprise het albino, she did it through parthenogenesis despite multiple locks with males. You should have seen my face when I saw the little white and yellow head poking out of that egg, lol.

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I am not going to pretend I know a lot about this, because I don’t. I only know what I have read in other discussions on here. If I am not mistaken, if this was the case, all babies would be an identical match to the mother. Since they are not identical to the mother, then one of your other snakes is albino. I would love for someone who knows more about this first hand to jump in and confirm or deny my statement. Maybe @t_h_wyman could jump in.

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I’m certainly not @t_h_wyman, and I do hope he has a chance to jump into this, but I can shine a bit of light on this point. It’s one of the most commonly confusing things about reptile parthenogenesis. Partho offspring are not necessarily identical in appearance to the dam. They will not express any alleles which aren’t present in the dam (of course), but alleles which the dam carries as hets may be homozygous in the offspring, thus visually expressed. Here is one discussion on this for anyone who wants more depth.

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Thanks, that was interesting. I did not see this posting. I am glad you shared it.
Guess I was wrong @inspirationexotics
I told you I didn’t know much about it :upside_down_face:

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Not the case with pythons, at least not with ball pythons. Babies get both alleles from mom but mom in this case was het albino, which means she had one normal gene and one albino gene. Therefore, I got a normal (single normal gene replication) and a visual albino (single albino gene replication). Easier way to think about it is babies aren’t direct clones of mom, but they do get their genetic material entirely from mom. :slight_smile:

Given that both babies were female and both failed to thrive (and that I got in touch with the breeders of the males and triple checked lineage, and neither even had a poss het albino in their known lineage) I’m 100% positive on the parthenogenesis.

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You are correct. After reading the other post, I realized how it can happen. The other post I have read must have been generic info on it. But do to it being a het, it would have (or could) fill both sports with the albino gene and get a visual. Also I did not know they where both female and did not thrive. These would have definitely led me to the same theory. But know I know more about it and that is why I like being here. Thanks for the update.

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You are mistaken :+1:t4:

In balls (and all snakes studied to date) the partho offspring are half-clones. It is because of this that we began to suspect partho was as common as it is, people kept getting “impossible” visuals out of pairings

@caryl 's link covers the details pretty well so I will not repeat it all here

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