Okay, as promised, here's the hatchling photo of one of my adult female black-and-whites, followed by a crappy pic taken today (she would not sit still and absolutely didn't want to sit coiled-up!).

Photo of her as a hatchling directly following her post-hatch shed


Photo from earlier today



As I said in my previous post when I showed pictures of the male, female black-and-whites become just that...completely black-and-white. It appears that only the males with this mutation retain any tricolor pattern. Females also tend to be more gray than males as hatchlings (gray instead of red pigment). These snakes are definitely unique in the world of Lampropeltines, as I can't think of any other lampropeltine that has only the red pigment change to black while the white remains untouched.

Mitch

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