Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can anyone tell me what occurrance happened to strip my spider of his brown pigment after his shed this morning. He was found this a.m. with a shed and all his pigment stripped leaving him light grey where the brown would be and a pale yellow stripe down his back. I was told this is not genetic. I was also told this is an IMG snake. What is IMG? He is in a boaphile rack,kept at 90 hot end, controlled by a helix. There has been no changes in his diet and he has always been a superb eater. None of the other babies in this rack has had any color changes.
I do not know how to post images. Thanks

Well here's what I know,

1. These are widely called IMGs (Increasing Melanin Gene)but in fact are something else entirely. A true IMG would see an ever increasing amount of black acruing within the animal, creating a darker and darker appearance.

2. What most likely is happening is something that involves the brown and yellow pigments, leaving only concentrations of the silver through charcoal as well as pure melanin. This is the first that I have heard of this happening to a "morph" as usually it is just a normal that one day does the presto change o.

As far as this occurrence being genetic, every appearance change is indeed genetic, but depends on the environment in order for phenotypic (visual look)expression to take place, whether this is from diet, stress, or warmer temps, who knows.

What people usually mean when they say it "isn't genetic" as in jungles, labyrinths, etc is that it is either multiple traits that are hard to reproduce again into one animal, or that it is NON INHERITABLE.

Hope this helps, and please post some pics back, I'd love to see what it does to the spider "look".

Thanks,
Dan

Here's the pic of the spider

Cannot get the image to come up!

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Right click the image and get the properties you'll want to copy the location or URL.

1. Type or paste the URL between [ img ] [/img ] (take out all the spaces)

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Tosha

Try again at posting a pic

but unless it stays that way for the rest of its life, it is still just a spider...

There are several occasions where this has happened to snakes for whatever reason, but it usually doesn't last.
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www.HeathersHerps.com

-Ohh, what a Lady-

Balls for Life, Baby!

Does this snake have any value? I have never seen anything like it!! If you would like to send me your e-mail I will send you some pics directly as I am unable to get one through KS. thanks

We had a normal pastel sib do that overnight also. I talked to many people and the general thought was a form of bacteria. I beleive it was Cory Woods who had a good explanation for it. Did it have a runny stool before changing , or abnormal in any way that you can remember.

No,he did not have any runny stools or environmental changes. I am downright anal when it comes to keeping their drawers clean but who knows what the mice harbor. I did buy mice for the first time in a long time. I usually feed my own stock raised here but were not producing enough for the demand. I will hold on to him and see what interesting changes occurs. Thanks

it's too simmetrical and defects free to be caused by bacteria. it seems that something told to his body to push put the pigments in those specific places (sides)
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www.qualitysnakes.it

To me a snake that has the capability of changing at any time , and the anticipation of it happening again ? Is Priceless . I would start a controlled experiment to see if you can pinpoint the trigger . David

This is from Big Dog and has the url for some pictures

That is not IMG. IMG = Increased melanin gene, thats not it. He seems to have lost all his yellow pigment except on his back. I've seen alot of people have this happen before with normals, and morphs. He will go back to normal over his next few sheds. There are many theories why this happens, but no one can be 100% sure what the culprit is.

sorry to dissapoint.

-Grant

just cool to see it happen in a Spider!

I'd take as many pics as you can, Probably never going to see a spider like that again!

it's just like a "supposed paradox axantic" I saw on this page some months ago.... in a night it appeared like this!

PS:hey big Dog, your pied is doing great here in Italy!
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www.qualitysnakes.it