I'm not sure exactly what you are asking so my reply will be kind of long in an attempt to cover all of the bases - hopefully, I'll cover your specific question in here somewhere.

The recessive genes you are talking about will pass onto the bateater offspring the same way that they would if the animals were to be bred to a mate of the same species. So, if you have a Heterozygous for Albino Burmese female (for example) that you bred to a Wild Type Retic all of the offspring would have a 50% chance of carrying that gene for Albinism.

Now, if you are wondering what would happen if both the sire and dam were het. for Albino, you may or may not end up with albino bateaters. I am not too up-to-date on whether this has been tried (I'm sure someone out there has tried this at some time) or what the results have been. It all depends on whether the albino gene that Burmese pythons traditionally carry is the same as the one that Reticulated pythons traditionally carry. In order for the two genes to be compatible (in this case it compatibility would mean that when paired up they would produce an albino hatchling - we won't worry about whether it would also potentially cause birth defects, etc.) - anyways, in order for them to be compatible the two genes would in essence have to be the same gene for both species: they would have to reside on the same location on the chromosome, be structurally the same (made up of the same base pairs) and would have to affect the pigmentation of the animal in the same way.

There are a number of ways that genes can affect an animal's skin (or hair, or scale) pigmentation that would result in an animal that looks to be an albino. In fact, some species have more than one way (genetically - through two or more different genes) to achieve the same "look", but the genes responsible are not the same and do not affect the pigmentation in the same manner (the result is the same, but the process of getting there is different). Colombian boas, for example, have two different genes available to them that both result in the traditional "white and yellow" albino, but the two genes are not compatible with each other.

I hope that made sense. Lastly, if you are asking whether it is possible to create "morph" bateaters. Then the answer is "Yes." It is completely possible to introduce a gene or two from both the reticulated python's gene pool as well as the Burmese python's gene pool that could, somewhere down the genetic line create a morph or morph combo bateater.

If you wanted to take a het. Blond Retic and combine that with a het. albino Burm you could do so and end up with bateaters that are all 50% het. for both the albino and blond traits. However, doing it this way would require you to hold back all of the offspring to raise up and breed back to each other to (hopefully) create your morph. You would not be able to breed any of the offspring back to either the sire or the dam to "prove them out" if your intention was to create a "pure" bateater morph (don't jump on me about using the term pure when referring to bateaters... I kept it in quotes and it is only used as it applies to this illustration). If you have the time, space and money this wouldn't be a bad way to do things.

However, to speed up the project you would be better off using either co-dom traits (so you could identify the gene carriers right off the bat) or, if you really want to use recessive genes to create your morph, I would STRONGLY suggest using a homozygous sire or dam of the trait you want to integrate into your bateaters. That way you can be assured that all of the offspring are 100% hets and you will be able to safely hold back only the offspring that you like and still be assured that they are hets. Doing it this way will allow you to keep the bateaters "pure" without having to breed anything back to either the burn or retic parent and end up creating a 75/25 cross instead of the 50/50 cross you are shooting for.

I know that this last part was a little "over explained". I apologize for that. I had a train of thought going while I was typing this up but there were numerous interruptions so it ended up coming out kind of choppy and redundant.

I hope that I covered your specific question somewhere in here. If not, just reply with your specific question and I'll do my best to address it.
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Stay United!


I'm still not sure if it's weird that my best friend is a two year old boa named Ronin. He's quiet, non-judgemental and listens... what more could you want?

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