Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well tonight I was showing off some snakes to my buddies and one guy was highly inquisative which I usally enjoy. One thing that I have learned since I've been in school is that college students take whatever knowledge they gain from class and act like experts on the matter. This guy and I went around in circles about codominance and dominant gene expression in boas. I even went the route to show him pictures of a jungle(codom.) or het and super jungle (dom.) This wasn't good enough, instead of trying to level with me and try to understand what I was telling/showing him he decided to tell me and every other boa breeder who has seen the genetic expression more than just through text books that we have it all wrong. We went around and around for about 20 minutes before I decided to actually leave my place and go to my girlfriends to cool down. I know in this world you can't win everyone over with opinions and facts, but why try to argue all scholarly when he had no backbone or real life experience or understanding to go by. I think he was trying to bust my chops, but no matter how I explained it I was wrong. I hope he doesn't rely solely on text book smarts to get by in life. He especially didn't forget to mention how many genetics classes he had taken. I failed to mention to him that I didn't give a rats ass or mention that I am a Biology major in my senior year. Trey

Trey, hate to nudge you on this, but if you typed what you explained, you were a little off.

Jungle, the mutation, is Co-dominant.

A Jungle Boa is the Heterozygous form.
A Super Jungle is the Homozygous form.

They don't become Dominant because they are homozygous. Common misconception. The mutation is either Co-dominant, dominant or recessive and the animal is either wild type, heterozygous or homozygous for the trait.
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www.GilbertBoas.com

I was typing fast, I meant to put homozygous after super jungle. The whole discussion about codominance and dominance was consequent of the het/homozygous expression of jungles.

So let me get it straight, I was showing him jungles in the het and homozygous forms and explaining codominance, the conversation turned into text book definition discussions and suddenly dominance got thrown out there.

Hey, take a look at this and let me know what you think:
http://www.GilbertBoas.com
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www.GilbertBoas.com

I just checked it out. Looks like a expansive list and covers most everything. Are you planning on a website in the near future. I just called your cell to talk about things. I guess only us students are up this late at night. How are the poss. het bloods coming along.

Poss hets are doing well, litter due in about a month. So we'll see.

I am planning a website. I need to get my own host, this is hosted on a friend's site 3 domain names cover the list right now. I just masked my domain name on it.
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www.GilbertBoas.com

that the guy I talked to found it impossible to have multiple codominant genes expressed at the same time like salmon jungle motleys for instant. I thought that color/pattern could only go one way or the other. I was reasonable in the fact that he couldn't visualize these morphs without studying them for some time.

Yeah, that's just dumb. Like saying an animal can't exhibit multiple recessive or recessive and co-dom or any combination.

Oh well, some people need real world examples to truely get it. Biology text books are the worst learning material since they need to be rewritten so often. It isn't a science that stops.
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www.GilbertBoas.com

Exactly. He was trying to pin the super jungle as the dominant, and I showed him the arabesque and salmon to explain dominance. Didn't happen. Do you have pictures of this bleach back you have on your list. Have you added this cesium boa to this list, I didn't look to hard, but I didn't know if it was too recent to be added.

I have a picture of the Bleach Back but I don't have permission to show it.

The cesium was a bogus April fools joke.
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www.GilbertBoas.com

should have figured that though, it looked pretty unreal. I probably would have been more excited if it was col. Maybe one day though like an extreme genetic irridescent or something. One can dream right?

Did the Caesium make the list? LOL.

Phil Goss