Say an albino pops out of what should be a normal litter of boas, or any other snake for that matter. Does that mean that the parents are absolutely positively carrying the albino gene? I recently found a leucistic hognose and a friend of mine's theory is that the parents were hets and just happened to cross paths and breed. Seems like pretty high odds to me. Albino animals are found in the wild and the chance that the parents are hets seem slim. Maybe this is like the chicken and the egg story. Which came first, the albino or the het ?
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Genetics question............
SNAKE26
Feb 15, 2007 03:06 PM
Replies (4)
wstreps
Feb 15, 2007 03:29 PM
No their not necessarily hets. Spontaneous genetic mutation or the fact that nature is not perfect is one of the corner stones of evolution. Ernie Eison
Link
rainbowsrus
Feb 15, 2007 04:29 PM
Yes there is a possibility os spontaneous genetic mutation, But that possibility is extremely small. Much more likely that both parents are hets.
-----
Thanks,
Dave Colling
www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com
0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)
LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.24 BRB
12.14 BCI
And those are only the breeders 
lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats 
ChrisGilbert
Feb 15, 2007 06:38 PM
Either something super rare happened and both alleles mutated in the same animal resulting in a homozygous morph from two parents which were not hets.
Or another rare event happened where two independent mutations occured resulting in heterozygous animals being produced they happened to breed, and ta-da!
rainbowsrus
Feb 16, 2007 11:07 AM
Or, the most likely scenario is one independent mutation occured and has been passed down at a 50% rate to countless generations and two descendents which have that mutated gene bred and ta-da!
>>Either something super rare happened and both alleles mutated in the same animal resulting in a homozygous morph from two parents which were not hets.
>>
>>Or another rare event happened where two independent mutations occured resulting in heterozygous animals being produced they happened to breed, and ta-da!
-----
Thanks,
Dave Colling
www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com
0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)
LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.24 BRB
12.14 BCI
And those are only the breeders
lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats
