Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Would an albino black Milk start out as an albino tricolor and gradually become solid albino, or would the lack of melanin cause the Black milk to remain a tri-color into adulthood? My question might be, does the animal turn black, or does the black mask the still present other colors? I’m posting this here because the Black Milk would have to be bred to an albino Honduran or something to get the albino gene into it while selectively retaining the color change trait of the Black Milk.

This has been discussed several times here before with differing viewspoints, I believe that you would get a washed out tricolor amel. similar to some of the low contrast amel hondurans. Reason being that the ontogenetic melanism does not appear to manifest itself when amelanism is exhibited. A good example of this is the different forms of amelanistic black ratsnake while most ratsnakes don't achieve the uniformily black adult coloration that the milksnakes do, they still have a very distinct pattern as adult amels. Some (probably the "blackest" were they not albino) do have a faded white overwash but not to the extent you would think. I think it would take a few generations of backbreeding to pure gaigeae to get the honduran influence out of the hybrid offspring and again be working with animals that turn solid black as adults in the cross you asked about. I think the only way to truly test this theory, one would have to have two hets (probably F3-F4) that were solid black themselves and produce an amel then raise that animal to adulthood. Some of the pure Honduran lines out there from "ugly" normal looking animals could most likely produce amels that were as white as these would be because of the amount of black tipping that overtakes the red, these of course would be harder to find nowadays as people have strived to eliminate this appearance from thier animals through selective breeding. It would probably be easier to work toward producing a Honduran that was washed out with white using only pure animals derived from tipped out "ugly" adults....they'd be alot easier to sell too as they wouldn't have the stigma of being a back-bred hybrid. I am actually surprised no one has done this since for several years now you can obtain gaigeae for a fraction of what they once were sold for.

Hope this helps
Horridus

Good stuff, thanks. I wasn’t thinking about the ontogenetic change in Black Rats, but you bring up an interesting point, in the whitesided Black Rat, the adults never are white side with solid black backs are they? It seems they retain more of the juvenile pattern along the back and never complete the color change. Now I’m wondering if a whitesided Black Milk would result in a whiteside with solid black back? AAAHHH So many alleles- so little time!