The only way to tell is to mate a salmon to an orangetail and then mate their babies to normals. If orangetail and salmon are the same gene or alleles, then statistically 1/4 of the salmon x orangetail babies would have a pair of mutant genes. And 1/4 would be salmon, 1/4 would be orangetail, and 1/4 would be normal. When mated to a normal, those snakes with a pair of mutant genes would not produce any normal babies.

On the other hand, if orangetail and salmon are the result of independent dominant mutant genes, then mating salmon x orangetails to normals should produce some normal babies if at least 20 babies are produced.

So the only way to tell is to make a couple of dozen salmon x orangetails, mate them to normals, and weed out the failures. A failure is defined as a snake that produces any normal babies. If all the salmon x orangetails fail the breeding test, you have pretty good evidence that you can't make supers by mating salmon and orangetail.

Paul Hollander

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