Reptile & Amphibian Forums

so a moonglow is a hypo snow right?...well does that really make sense if a snow has no melanin(melanin is black pigment right?)..a hypo has reduced melanin then the typical(regular) group of animals...so how can you have a reduced amount of something that isnt there to start off with?...just tryin to get this all clear..thanks in advance

difficult to describe but here goes:

Hypo may not simply be a reduction of melanin, it appears to actually replace or swap it with another pigment. I believe it may possibly be more of a pattern morph where it changes where the pigments are, not how much is expressed.

Example is albino vs sunglow. The clearest difference is at the tail blotches. The albino has a clear ring around the redish blotches where the black would have been. The sunglow has that band reduced to nothing or near nothing making the tail blotch fully red/pink. Also sunglows have more red all over but that may be an extension of the red for black effect?
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
10.22 BRB
10.15 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Actually it does make sense.

BTW you could also ask this question of the Sunglow boas.

Even though there's no further reduction of melanin in a Hypo Snow boa/Moonglow, it would still carry the Hypo gene. Since it carries the Hypo gene it would pass it on to a portion of it's offspring. Unless it was a Super Moonglow. If it was a Super it would pass the Hypo gene on to all if it's offspring.

I thought the same thing with Sunglows. If an albino has NO melanin, theoretically, there should be no difference if it also has a trait for REDUCED melanin, right?
So there should be no difference, but somehow there is and it's often REALLY obvious!
Go figure, right?
Aaron

thanks so much for your help everyone...so if i understand this right then hypo in a snow(moonglow) means that its different from a snow in the fact that it can pass on the reduced melanin gene(hypo) and has a different appearance(the pattern of a sunglow..the "butterfly"...and the circles of the tail are also different looking because of the pigment difference...good or am i still missing it???lol

n/p