First let me say congratulations on a litter of great looking babies. They may turn out to better than hypo Motleys; time will tell.



I wanted to thank you for being so willing to share information. This kind of post outlining your breeding season are very usefull and this litter truely poses some interesting questions.



Now for my thoughts on this litter. First and foremost in my mind is that every litter you have this year and the whole breeding season must be taken in the context of animals being potentially severly stressed by hurricane Katrina. Obviously we try to make the environments for our animals as nice as possible but it is very hard to predict how animals will respond to severe events such as a hurricane. Will this make them more willing to breed in a time of enviromental instability or unlikely to breed for the same reason. Will the dramatic weather change their normal perception of breeding cues do to light, temperature and barometric changes. I have been wondering how breeders in the area of the severe hurricanes would do this year and if the animals would behave differently. I wonder if the fact all of the babies are female is related to this.



Now for the animals themselves I think the most likely explanation is that you were just really unlucky meaning that the Motley is the father and you just got no Motleys. Ironically, if this was a retained sperm event since the animals don't resemble last years jungles it would likely be the same conslusion; that you were unlucky to produce no jungles. What I think is important is to know what the parents of these parents, of the Motley in particular, look like. This may give you a lot of insight into these animals. In particular, it would be ineteresting to see how the "normals" compare to the parents.

Regarding the bad luck it is always a genetic roll of the dice. We frequently hear of when the odds gods work in someones favor but rarely do we hear the opposite. I think sometimes when hets or morph x het are bred and no visual morph is produced people conclude that the animal isn't a het when it may just be very bad luck. Look at how much difficulty Jeremy is having making the Blizzard. I think as more people breed successfully we will see more litters like this as the odds even out overall.



You and others certainly have more experience with jungles than me and I defer to you and others as to whether these are really jungles. This will be one of those litters that pronounces itself as destinctive at the start with very impressive animals and the significance and meaning of the appearance of the animals will hopefully be made clear in future breedings.



Congratulations again. These may not have been what you expected but they are very striking in appearance and may wind up being something special.



Bill Kirby

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