>>Awesome, Marc...

>>

>>Have more pics? Have pics of your snake stretched out?

>>

>>Is Hypo better than Het? How old is yours?

>>

>>From baby to 4 Feet, how many years does that take?

>>

>>

>>Thanks again,

>>Dan





Hypo is a Homozygous animal (Homozygous meaning the dominant trait, or in other words the trait that the animal is showing). Heterozygous (therefore "Het" ) is a recessive trait, in other words the animal looks normal but is carrying the "hidden" gene for whatever morph it is "Het" for.



Hypo-melanistic (of course Melanin refers to the makeup of the BLACK coloration) snakes have a reduced black color. Some are greyish, some brownish, some extreme hypos show almost purple.



The oposite would be an animal that was HYPER-melanistic, or had tons of black pigment (melanin) that would almost completely obscure (cover, block out) the other colors on the snake.



Homozygous animals show the trait that they carry as it is a dominant gene. In otherwords Hypo, albino (Amelinistic), snow, ghost, anery etc animals are Homozygous for the trait that they carry, making them look the way they do.l



Heterozygous animals are normal looking, yet carry the gene (recessive in this case) for the morph hidden inside them. If you breed a heterozygous animal to a homozygous animal, you will get both homozygous (the morph is dominant so they look like the particular morph) and heterozygous animals from a breeding.



Also you can breed a het to a het and get normals (not het), het and homozyogous babies. It's a cheap way to get into the more expensive snakes as "hets" are much cheaper.



This is a shot of a tri-color hypo (mine) with her Heterozygous (ie. "het" ) sister:

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"Colubrid-aphilia", adj; An inordinate love of Colubrids.

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