I do know of a few litters of black tail anery to black tail anery and those litters resulted in an entire litter of what we are calling black tail anery's. I don't know of any het black tail to het black tail litters, but I would be very interested to see what the results of a breeding like that would be.

The problem with both of those breedings as I see it, however, is that while an entire litter of black tail boas as a result of breeding black tail to black tail would be an indication that the look is some type of recessive gene, it doesn't prove that the gene is Anerytherism. Neither does the het to het breeding. That breeding would in my opinion, prove that the gene is recessive if 25% of the litter were black tails, however, it still doesn't tell us what the black tail actually is. Is it Anerytheristic? Is it Hypermelanistic? Is it Axanthic? Does this make sense?

This is why I think that the best way to prove that the Black Tails are in fact Anerytheristic is to either produce a Blizzard or a Ghost with them. The Ghost would be the easier route to go because the odds of having one of those in a litter are better than 1 in 16. But, these breedings would prove anerytherism because they would take away other colors that could otherwise mask red in these boas. So, for example, producing a Ghost with the black tail would take away the black, allowing us to see if there is any red underneath there hiding somewhere. lol

On the other hand, if the Black tails are Hypermelanistic, rather than Anerytheristic, we would have different results. In Blizzard breedings, for example, we might see albinos that are more white in appearance because the heavier concentration of Black in the Black tails would be removed in an albino, leaving more white. However, the lack of Anerytherism (if the Black Tail isn't an anery) would still leave red, so we would see Albinos that are high white, but we would not ever get a Blizzard.

This is partly speculation but I have done alot of thinking about it over the years while we have waited for these various litters, and this is what I have come up with! lol

Again, I'd love to hear any and all feedback on this!
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Amanda Burke

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