Posted by:
rtdunham
at Sat Jun 4 13:15:57 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by rtdunham ]
>>hi i just purchased an 8month old honduran milksnake. he is beautiful and looks like most the pictures i see of tangerine hondurans (he has no white striping) and i had thought they were the same and that the "tangerine" title was simply left out occasionally. i realize now that is not the case and wondering what the difference is, colorwise from babie to adult, and genetically. is just the normal "honduran" the dominant/normal type and all the tang/anery/hypo types the recessive? i hope this makes sense and doesn't sound too lame.
>>thanks,
>>zen.
In the wild, some hondurans are tangerines and some are tricolors (with white in middle of each triad). Some are inbetween, with the white replaced with cream, pale yellow, bright yellow, gold, or orange.
Louis Porras theorizes the tricolors are the upland animals, evolved to better thermoregulate at higher (cooler) altitudes because they typically gain melanin as they age, often becoming "bicolors" where the light rings are obscured by black, leaving only black and red showing...an overall darker look that absorbs more heat. The tangeriens are reportedly more common in lowland areas...the snake's range extends to coastal areas.
BOTH the tricolor and tangerine "wild types" are dominant to the other--recessive--color morphs: anerythristic, hypomelanistic, and amelanistic.
peace
terry
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RE: honduran vs. tang. honduran clarification - rtdunham, Sat Jun 4 13:15:57 2005