"Those may have been from a line that was a Texas cross"



BINGO!,......unless the bug-eyed one's you were referring to were wild-caught in a known locale that had nothing to do with linheimeri whatsoever, they have had to have been crossed inadvertently all the time over the years of countless people owning and breeding both types. Hell, I even bought a leucistic "texas" from two different sources to make a pair years ago that were both labeled as "Texas" rats and later on I discovered one had very deep ruby-red pupils. The other was an off-white "ivory" color that is said to be a leucistic "Black" rat characteristic.



Heck yes!, when nobody can tell the difference between the two anyway, simple common sense tells me the cross happens all the time every single breeding year unbeknownst to the breeders. I totally agree, with a few exceptions, the crosses are floating around all over the place being sold as either subspecies.



The way I look at all this is if all these casual hobbyist/breeders can't even tell the difference between the many patterned snakes out there in the hobby, how in god's name could they POSSIBLY tell the difference in the two white snakes?..LOL!!.it just ain't gonna happen, let alone know which are crosses out of all of them out there. I am betting something like 95% wouldn't have a clue which ones they had. I sure didn't either, and the one with deep ruby eyes made me even that much more unsure..



I am wondering if the off-white "ivory" thing isn't simply dreamed up BS too. All it takes is for someone to have some that look more ivory than others and are simple variants that could be in either lecistic ssp.



Anyway, I could never even guess which are true lecistic Blacks and which are true leucistic Texas rats on the best of days, and I know damn well others can't tell either. Just me knowing what most folks know about taxonomy and identification tells me it just can't happen. The ONLY people that know which ones are which, are the few guys that 100% KNOW that theirs originated from one of the few leucistic Black rat locales that were never, ever outcrossed to anyone elses stock not gotten from the same bloodline sources, like maybe Don soderberg's line of leucistic Blacks here. I wish I would have been able to ask him personally, because I was talking to Soderberg just last night for almost two hours. I will remember to ask him about the line he had next time I talk to him though to see what he personally knows about them and where they specifically originated from.



Bottom line is you are totally right about the "mish-mash" thing. I'm very sure a good percentage of them out there are just that, because how could anyone tell otherwise?





~Doug

-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"



serpentinespecialties.webs.com

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