We know that spider is some sort of dominant gene; the general public doesn't know for sure yet exactly which kind.



The vast majority and perhaps all spiders seen so far are heterozygous for the spider gene. Heterozygous just means that they have an unmatched pair of whatever gene you are talking about. Because spider is some kind of dominant gene the heterozygous spiders are not normal looking (they are the spider morph type) but because they are heterozygous they also have a 50/50 chance of passing the normal for spider gene off to each offspring.



So, when breeding normal (het) spider X normal (het) spider it works out just like any het X het breeding, each egg should have a 25% chance of getting the normal version of the spider gene from both parents and being completely normal. However, there should also be a 25% chance of getting the spider gene from both parents and being homozygous spider (the remaining 50% chance is of getting the spider gene from only 1 parent or the other and being heterozygous spider). If spider is completely dominant then the homozygous spider would in all ways be the same as the more common heterozygous spiders except that when you breed it to a normal (for spider) it would produce 100% heterozygous spider (because it has no room for a normal copy of the spider gene to give to any of its offspring). I've not yet heard anyone claim to have produced and proven a homozygous spider so it's open to speculation as to if it would be viable and if so what it would be like.

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• stupid question - imridethelghtng, Sat May 6 14:16:24 2006
• RE: stupid question - steelersdiehard, Sat May 6 16:50:16 2006
• your BP is awesome - XtremeXteriors, Sat May 6 17:03:20 2006
• Spider - RandyRemington, Sun May 7 00:15:18 2006
• RE: Spider - jnjreptiles, Sun May 7 08:29:40 2006
• RE: Spider - thisdude, Sun May 7 12:41:03 2006
• RE: Spider - RandyRemington, Sun May 7 17:46:32 2006