>>Terry has a triple-homo been proved yet? It would look like your hybino right?
>>Thanks,
>>Dave

Dave,

Not that i know of.

No breedings have been done yet that I know of, that would produce a for-sure, know-it-when-you-see-it triple homozygous, other than the one reported here which has the remote possibility of doing that: It takes at least a hypo/alb/anery X same, or better yet, a ghost/amel x same, to produce one that you'll know when you see it.

That's because the triple homozygous, i believe, will look generally like a snow, in the same way a hybino looks (generally) like an albino: the albino--"amelanism" is the correct term, meaning "no melanin" or "lacking melanin"--masks whether or not the animal's also a hypo: I mean, how do you tell if melanin is reduced--(the effect of hypomelanism)-- if melanin's already absent entirely?

So hybinos look like albinos and we have to
--guess whether they're hypo too or not,
--or test-breed to see if they are (I tested one this year and it proved to be hybino;
-- or produce them from something that produces ALL hypos (like the hypo/alb pairing) so that whatever albinos produced HAVE to be hypos too so we know they are hybinos, which is the case of the one pictured in this thread
--or develop a theory that identifies any subtle differences in appearance that would allow us to distinguish hybinos from non-hypo albinos: the current theory is that the hybinos are the "pale" albinos out of pairings that have the potential of producing hybinos.

Now on to your question about the triple homozygous:

It'll look like a hybino (hypo and albino) AND incorporate the added features of being an anerythristic, it's important to remember that. And the anery basically removes red--that's why snow hondos are white and pale pink ( anerys aren't really anerys, lacking erythrins--red and yellow--completely, they're really HYPOerythristic, with those colors greatly reduced, so all anerys have a faint violet/cream/pink/hue in the rings that would be red on a normal). That's why snows don't have bright red on them, just pale pink. But snows almost always seem to gain yellow too as they age, as do many albinos, resulting in snows being neat animals with three pastel hues.

Another way to look at it is that the triple homozygous will be a SNOW that's ALSO hypo: the addition of the hypo trait will have little or no effect, because snows are albinos and so lacking black, so what effect will the addition of hypo have, which reduces what's already not there? It might affect the appearance slightly, but we don't yet know how.

Which brings us to the final point: Yes, there may be triple homozygous animals out there: 1/4 of the snows produced from triple het x triple het pairings (there are a few of those around) will be triple homozygous. But how do we tell which ones? Until we figure out a way to tell by looking, we can tell which ones only by test breeding to hypos: If a snow possible hybino produces all hypo babies when bred x hypo females (it's harder to test a female because you can only breed her x a hypo and see the results of her one clutch, so the statistical requirements for high probability may not be met), we can conclude (as i did in the similar test with my hybino male) that the snake IS also hypo, and thus in the case of an animal that looks like a snow, it's a triple-homozygous. I'm not aware of anyone testing that yet.

Lastly, it's worth noting you can never PROVE absolutely a hybino or a triple homoZ by test breeding as described above, you can only establish high probabilities that approach proof: In the case of my hybino male, i produced 17 babies all of which were hypos. The chance of that happening from an animal that's not hybino, but only het/hypo, are apparently something like 1 in 65,000.

Whew!

Terry

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