>>... I haven't seen them advertised in a while...I know that they were just a phase Bill Love named, but are they the same as hypos? Did the name change?

>>Dusty



Dusty,



Tangerine Dreams, named by Bill and Kathy Love as you say, were not hypos, but were pretty and clean tangerine hondurans with jet-black rings as is the case with wild Hondurans. In fact, the original snake that was the patriarch of their Tangerine Dream line was a wild-caught animal. Bill bought it for $15 at an import shop in Miami, where it was misidentified as a coral snake. Unknown to them, it was also het/hypo.



Anyway, Bill and Kathy developed their Dream line and were surprised in 1993 when two hypo babies -- lighter, brighter orange and with purplish-brown rings where a normal or tangerine dream would have black rings -- hatched out of a clutch from their tangerine dream line. They had bred the male to one of its daughters, which, it turns out, had inherited a hypo gene from its het father, as 50% of such babies do.



Quoting an article i wrote in 1996 for a British herp magazine:



"The changes are so distinctive they were immediately apparent even among hatchlings from clutches of Bill and Kathy Love’s “Tangerine Dream” Hondurans, which have a positive reputation for exceptional color (the Loves co-owned Ft. Myers, Florida-based Glades Herp reptile business until early 1996 and retained the Colubrid collection after selling their interest in the business).



The Loves hatched five hypos--1.1 in 1993; 2.0 in 1994, and 1.0 in 1995. (In 1996) I obtained the 1993 pair and two older related females, one a het and one a possible het. Another breeder obtained one of the 1994 males. All the hypos came from pairings of the Loves’ original “Tangerine Dream” male (which died in 1995) and his daughters. They were produced in ratios consistent with a simple recessive mutation.

This year will be the first for potential breedings from hypo X hypo and hypo X het pairings. At the time of this writing (late April 1996) the hypo male has been observed copulating with the het and possible het females and (in outcrosses to introduce new blood) normal females; the hypo female is due to shed and will be paired with the male early in May.

So far, only two other hypos have come to light. Both males, they hatched in 1995 in another Florida breeder’s collection. He had a male offspring of the Loves’ “Tangerine Dream” male, and for the first time in 1995 paired it with one of its own daughters, resulting in the appearance of the hypos. Again, this is consistent with a simple recessive mutation. There are many breeders with “Tangerine Dream” stock from the Loves, however, and it’s not unlikely they would have inbred them to produce more “Dream” Hondurans, so it’s also not unlikely a few other hypos may have appeared in other collections or will now that the link is known."



I was lucky enough to produce eight hypo babies in 1996 from the animals I got from the Loves.



You can read more about the origins of all three recessive Hondo morphs, and the efforts to create the double-morphs and triple morphs, in the September 2002 issue of Reptiles Magazine.



peace

terry

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