I don't think there is a sign for het albino. I suspect that some rather nice patterned individuals have been bred into the albino line and those separate genes account for the nice pattern they are seeing. Then again I’ve only owned a few for sure het albinos but I didn’t notice any tendencies for them to look out of the ordinary.



I do think there are some "recessive" mutations that sometimes show in the hets. Remember that the concept of being completely recessive is just something people made up and may not always fit neatly with the way things really are.



There is pretty good evidence in Burmese pythons that some het granites have the puzzle pattern and that some het greens have the cinnamon pattern. Why all hets don't show it I don't know. I also don’t have a good feel for how often it shows in hets and if/why some lines might show it more than others. However, in both cases, the hets that do show have intermediate patterns between normal and the homozygous form. This is what got me on the lookout for sporadic het signs in ball pattern mutations.



The evidence seems to be mounting on the sporadic het pied sign (white belly with dark black lines on the edge). With pieds it looks like the white comes up from a white belly and they have the two black lines in the "normal" areas. It might be that the white belly with black lines at the two edges seen in some hets is an intermediate form between normal and pied.



It would be nice if all hets had it to the max and no normals had anything even remotely like it but unfortunately nature doesn't always work out that neatly. I think we should stay on the lookout for het signs, especially with pattern mutations since there is precedence with the burms. It complicates marking possible hets but it is also a useful tool to speed up the proliferation to meet the industry demand for these morphs.



IMHO the best policy is to openly discuss any possible het signs so that all buyers can make an informed decision after weighing the available evidence. Otherwise you get a situation where those with information could unfairly take advantage of those without. I haven’t seen any evidence that het signs have been used unfairly, to the contrary, I think the policy of selling whole clutches was an attempt to get around the issue without disclosing the information. It just bothers me that the potential is there (i.e. a breeder could hold back all the sign animals for themselves or their friends and then sell all the ones without it as full chance animals).

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