Why I believe that a "moustache" is a heritable trait in it's own right is the snakekeeper's axanthics. From browsing their available list off and on the past couple years, I have noticed that the axanthics seem to usually have the moustache, and so do the hets! It may be a co-dom thing people just aren't too concerned with? A possible axanthic het marker? (Of course if it is inherited seperately from the axanthic gene, it only marks that the snake is related to the axanthic blood who demonstrated the moustache where it came from, NOT that it carries the gene for axanthic, as these traits may be inherited separately.)



It'd be interesting for some input about this from people who have SK axanthics and hets, or even just moustachioed normals. But I have definately noticed the moustache along with that strain of axanthics, and also in clutches of normals whose siblings mostly also carry that trait.It makes me think it is definately a heritable trait. It's true relationship to the axanthic gene-- I do not know.



I have actually been looking for a female with a moustache because I think it's cute, much in the way I was thrilled that my female's eye stripes end, while my ghost's eye stripes fade into his neck. They are just interesting differences that probably don't mean a thing, but to me make the snakes unique. I have four balls now .2 normals, 1. ghost and 1. pastel whose patterns are all very interesting to me. (As an artist who has studied my snakes as individuals, I could probably draw the jist of their unique patterns all on command.) There are nucances in pattern and color in these creatures we often miss in the big picture of "morphs." These qualities I like that make my animals different from one another are usually those same traits people try to exploit when marketing a normal as "possibly the next big thing" from eyes, to bellies, to spots and stripes. We probably look over many minute heritable traits in balls while searching for the earth-shattering ones. IMHO.

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