White tail tips as clown marker?

I’ve heard about a dozen people mention that if a snake has a white tip on their tail that’s only a few scales then it is het clown.

Any myth busters out there? Is it true?

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Heard of the line under tail as a marker for clown. But like all markers not always true.

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Definitely. Like other markers I’m sure some of it is hopeful at best. Tram lines for pieds, clear shed for hypo, etc aren’t guaranteed.

I noticed when I posted this that a lot of people seemed to be repeating it and clown is popular. Why not see if we can exercise it? :slight_smile:

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Wait, what is a tram line?

Tram lines or railroad tracks if you’re in the US (more like the rails) along the belly. Like if someone took a black marker and just drew lines down the underside of the snake.

It’s a het pied marker but like all markers all het pieds don’t have them, they’ll be difficult to see with other morphs, etc. It’s an old one that many people swear by but is definitely not guaranteed.

How about random white scales along spine (mostly)? I have a banana enchi 100% het pied male and as he grows bigger, along with black freckles banana usualy get with age, he shows some random white scales here and there. I was wondering if it is another marker for pied or possibly something else too. He doesn’t have any tram lines btw

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I don’t know of white scales along the spine being a marker for anything - but I definitely wouldn’t worry about them not having tram lines. It’s definitely not guaranteed. :slight_smile:

The only way to know 100% is to prove it out by breeding with another pied. Same thing goes for the white tail tips mentioned in OP. Even if 50 people showed up to tell me 100% of their het clowns had white tail tips it still means nothing if it isn’t proven out by breeding. :slight_smile: It’s more of a curiosity than anything.

That’s a really nice animal you have there!

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If neither parents are clowns or clown combos (assuming we’re only talking about visuals) there’s no chance of it having clown in it.

And all offspring from clowns will be het and/or visuals, hets minimum

Yes. That’s obvious. :slight_smile:

Visual clown x non-clown = 100% het clown
Het clown x non-clown = 50% het clown
25, etc down the line with a low but non-zero probability that breeding a great grand son to a clown produces a visual.

Markers, although absolutely not guaranteed, could give you a hint that an animal might have been one of those low probability animals. It’s fun to think about and consider re-adding a recessive trait to see if you’re nicely surprised. :slight_smile: Not much different than experimenting with a dinker.

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I have a FireFly 100% Het clown, he came from a pastel Clown x pastel. He doesn’t have a white tail tip but he has the resemblance of the line.

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I don’t have to breed it. I actualy know for sure he has the gene because his dad was pied banana and his mom was too het pied (yes, he got 2 super banana pied brothers). I was just curious whether it was possibly connected to this or any other recesive trait.

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Nice! That’s really interesting. I’ll see if I can get a picture of a snake that supposedly has the white tips tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if they also have the line.

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Here’s the tail of this supposed marker snake. He doesn’t have the solid line but a broken one and a white tail tip. :woman_shrugging:

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