Hey Matt

Thank you for the pics and the explanation. They sound much like my bush vipers that I am used to dealing with. The variable bush viper can be any color under the rainbow and you can sort of guess what the babies are going to look like by looking at their parents. But you will always get a mix of colors, just not a dramatic mix if the parents' colors are similar. When you breed two green animals, you will get primarily green babies. But if you breed a red animal to a black animal, you may get some black and some red babies, but there will be other colors as well. You may also see some greens or even yellows and I think that is determined by the recessive genes of the parents. Without a color there to be dominant it allows other colors to show up.

I was a biology major and I took genetics, but I am a landscaper by trade and I have lost the terminology through many years of not using it. With bush vipers this doesn't matter because I don't think that any color trends can be carried through with any regular certainty (you will never see a "tiger phase" Atheris squamigera, in my opinion). With blackheads it sounds like you can control what you get with the babies, to an extent. Then can I assume that if you breed two blacks all of the babies will be black? Same for reds? Has anyone determined whether red or black is the dominant trait? If you breed a red and a black will some of the babies be black but carry a red recessive gene that may show itself down the red when it is bred?

I'm just curious here, no other reason for the meddling. I'd better quit before I get any more over my head. Lol. Take care.

Derek

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