Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I hae a snake that shows black and white on some parts of his body, and others are close to normal....the thing is that there is a direct line that seperates them...He also has an incredibly unusual pattern and colors that are out of this world....

I just want to know what you guys/gals think of the paradox's...Ill post pics soon.

Thanks
Stephen

What where the parents?

One theory is that the paradox may be caused by dissimilar fertilized egg cells merging into one animal soon after fertilization. If this is the case it might be hard to predict the genetics of the reproductive cells (are they the visible morph or the het/poss het sibling?).

His linage is unknown, I picked him out of several hundred and a wholesaler last year(they didn't like balls) and he is awesome...

I will get some pics after work....

Theory??? It sounds very interesting but I am not sure I'm understanding you correctly. Thanks Vinnie

The theory is that occasionally two fertilized cells (i.e. siblings or twins) merge together very early on to make one animal. Some of the parts of the body end up being from one of the siblings and some from the other.

In humans this didn't get noticed until they started doing maternity tests and finding moms that didn't match their babies. This is because they tested a sample from a part of the mom from one of the twins and her ovaries where from the other twin.

It might happen a lot in snakes but only get noticed once you start working with het morphs and have the potential to produce a chimera which mixes a morph and non morph sibling. In this theory the albino parts are from an albino sibling and the normal parts are from a het or possible het sibling (or likewise with axanthic).

Information that would help to determine how likely this is to be the correct explanation would be to know if these paradox animals always come out of breedings involving at least one het. If you could produce a paradox from albino X albino breeding then it would need to be something else.

It would also be interesting to know the breeding results from the paradox animals. Do paradox albinos sometimes produce offspring showing their reproductive organs to be het albino or perhaps normal or do they always breed like homozygous albinos?

I find this to be interesting because some people say that it is quite common in axanthics but rarer in other morphs...but in other species of reptiles, the paradox is an inheritible gene on its own, as in you could have a paradox normal and it just look normal....or a situation like mine

One flaw I have found in the theroy that you mentioned is that Dan and Collette Sutherland produced a paradox axanthic last year that was from SK line to SK line...both were homogenous....I saw this incredible snake at Daytona last year while I talked to them for a while....I want to find out what is up though

Would anything else turn a snake B&W permenently like that? He ate a few rats today...first in a few weeks

That does tend to make me think something else is going on with the axanthics.

Even with the albinos it could just be much more likely that a het female was involved because there are more breeding hets than homozygous even at this late date. Also not much info out on what parents produced what. I just seem to remember hearing about hets a lot back when people where paying attention to paradox albino burms.

I will just have to try and see if it is genetic... I hope it is