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Kevin McCurley has a picture of a Woma x Lesser cross on p. 267 of his book that is spectacular. He acknowledges in the write-up that it is counter-intuitive in appearance given its parentage. I was wondering whether anyone has produced similar results, or if this was something that just clicked with the particular Woma and/or the Lesser that he used. I was also wondering whether anyone knows what this would look like as an adult. Appreciate any insight.

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/nerd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=58
The original snake.

Some of his kids

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/nerd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=157&Itemid=58

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/nerd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=172&Itemid=58

We have some other cool stuff from him too!

You need the hidden Platty gene and the hidden Woma gene to make this mutation, no exceptions! When I first made it I did not have any idea that there was going to be a reaction of hidden genes, we have also made the combo w/o the hidden gene.

Kevin
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"Satan™" is a registered trademark of NERD, Inc. Any copyright infringement is punishable by ETERNAL DAMNATION and some other terrible stuff.

Kevin -- Thanks very much for the links and the response. Just one follow-up question, which may be embarassingly ignorant, but when you talk about a "hidden gene" are you referring to a trigger that not every lesser x woma combination has a possibility of producing? In other words, do you believe that the woma and/or lesser lines that you used had something peculiar to either or both of those snakes, or does every lesser x woma combination have some potential, however limited, for producing an animal similar in appearance to the one in your book? Apologies if this is an incorrect use of this forum, but I did not expect you to respond personally. Which is very cool by the way, so thanks again.

You have to have a Woma Tiger with the hidden gene bred to a Lesser Platinum with the hidden gene to make that combo. So far no one has been able to make it. I got lucky to nail it.

I don't know all of the details but I think that the hidden gene in the Platty is what Ralph uses to make the Platty Daddy. So if you are lucky enough to have a Lesser carrying the hidden gene and breed it to a Woma Tiger that carries its little weird hidden gene then you CAN make it. Not all Lessers are created equal and 100% not all Womas are...the ones for sale that are selling for let's say a dozen happy meals, are NOT the Woma's that will make it, period! The same thing applies to the Lesser thing. If you want to make sure you have the hidden gene 100% then you MUST get it from the Daddy Platty lineage. This comes from either Ralph, Noah or anyone that has made Daddy Platties(if there is anyone besides them) and me since I have animals that exhibit this weird gene trigger. You could also get it by chance if a Lesser just happens to carry it and your lucky! I am not 100% positive that this is the same gene responsible for making the Daddy Platty and making the Woma gene freak out. There could be others things happening that we just don't know about, time will tell.

Just consider they are both heterozygous for the resulting weird looking striped snake.

Kevin
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"Satan™" is a registered trademark of NERD, Inc. Any copyright infringement is punishable by ETERNAL DAMNATION and some other terrible stuff.

Kevin -- Many, many thanks for the excellent explanation. Knew there had to be some reason for the dramatic difference in price points for the Womas on offer. Appreciate you taking the time.

>>Kevin -- Many, many thanks for the excellent explanation. Knew there had to be some reason for the dramatic difference in price points for the Womas on offer. Appreciate you taking the time.

I followed this thread from the morning and thought about the lesser/woma combo myself..but now seems a far reach to aquire the proper line to make it a project...with the animals pictured on mr satin's new link(http://www.newenglandreptile.com/nerd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=58)...thanxs also for clearing it up and for.. bringing to the post.

I have spoken with a number of people that were wondering why they had not been able to make the same mutation with a Lesser and Woma. Good to try to clear up up until I get the next genetic curveball in an egg...wait, Ive done it several more times just this season!

Kevin

>>>>Kevin -- Many, many thanks for the excellent explanation. Knew there had to be some reason for the dramatic difference in price points for the Womas on offer. Appreciate you taking the time.
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>>I followed this thread from the morning and thought about the lesser/woma combo myself..but now seems a far reach to aquire the proper line to make it a project...with the animals pictured on mr satin's new link(http://www.newenglandreptile.com/nerd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=58)...thanxs also for clearing it up and for.. bringing to the post.
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"Satan™" is a registered trademark of NERD, Inc. Any copyright infringement is punishable by ETERNAL DAMNATION and some other terrible stuff.

kevin,

hasn't it been proven several times now by Ralph that lessers do not carry the hidden gene but the normal looking platty sibs do? There have been many people do breedings from lessers sired by the original platty and still none have produced platties yet. Also by producing "daddy" morphs from the unrelated wild caught butter and the phantoms, wouldn't this strengthen that fact even more? I'm not trying to contridict you but that was my understanding of what was going on with at least the platty gene but either way those animals rock and keep up the good work.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

"I don't know all of the details but I think that the hidden gene in the Platty is what Ralph uses to make the Platty Daddy. So if you are lucky enough to have a Lesser carrying the hidden gene and breed it to a Woma Tiger that carries its little weird hidden gene then you CAN make it."

According to the breeding records, it seems that the "Hidden" gene is in fact an Allele of Lesser platinum, and that having one of each at the same locii equates to a Platty Daddy (or Butter, which is another allele). If this "hidden" gene that makes Platty Daddys was lying deep down in all the lessers from Ralph's line, we'd be seeing Platty Daddy's popping up all over the place.

As for another gene within the Less Plattys, well of course this is reasonable, just more than likely according to the data so far, this isn't the one responsible for the Daddys.

What this also means, is that if you bred a Platty or Butter Daddy to a normal, you would get 0 Daddy's, you'd get either Butters/Lessers or normal appearing animals het for "hidden" gene. Breed a "normal" sibling, with a Butter or Lesser, and you then have a 1/4 chance of hitting on producing a Daddy.

I have bred the Woma to lesser with 4 different clutches, and Kevin is right. My cross did not look anything like the one Kevin is talking about with the "hidden gene". I remember Kev talking about it last year, and so I bred Woma females to Lesser Males, and did NOT get the Wild Stripe thing Kev produced, but they are very cool looking still.

I did NOT know that BOTH hidden genes had to be present though. I thought it was just the WOMA Gene. Kev, have you made the NON cross with a Hidden WOMA gene and a lesser that Did NOT have the hidden gene? That is very interesting if So....

Just to recap, what Kev is saying is true about the hidden Woma gene. The lesser woma "hidden" is one of my favorite Morphs, and when i got mine out of the egg, I was a little disspointed because they didn't look as neat as the "hidden gene" cross. They are cool though.

Jeremy

"lesser that Did NOT have the hidden gene? That is very interesting if So.... "

Think you are confused here, all lessers do NOT have the hidden gene, and if a "lesser" did have the hidden gene, then it would be a Platty Daddy.

Another note, and correct me if I am wrong:

Platty Daddy x Normal = 50% Lesser and 50% normal het. Hidden/Dilute
Lesser X Lesser = Lucy
Lesser x Butter = Lucy
Lesser x "normal" sib from platty daddy = Platty Daddy
Butter X "normal" sib from platty daddy = Butter Daddy

So what that pretty much is saying, is that a Platty Daddy has 1 copy of the lesser allele matched with the "hidden" allele(Randy calls it "Dilute". A Butter Daddy, has 1 copy of the Butter allele, and 1 copy of the "hidden" allele.

If the hidden gene was truly in all of these "lessers" out there from Ralph's line, like I said, we'd have seen people producing them, but so far seems like the above is the way this story is working out....

Your outcomes agree with the allele theory for platy which also agrees with all the outcomes I've seen posted so far for that project. That isn't the same as being proven. There could be another explanation we haven't thought of yet. As far as I know some poster who uses the name Hahaman and lists as from Taiwan came up with the allele theory for platy.

I think the most interesting prediction of the theory that platy is a combination of lesser and just one additional allele of lesser is that in this theory any normal from platy X platy would be homozygous hidden gene (I like “dilute” because in this theory it’s only hidden when paired with normal, it can’t be hidden with lesser as it makes platy). If you then bred that homozygous hidden/dilute to a leucistic that was made by lesser X lesser you should get 100% platy, even though platy X platy would not give 100% platy.

I saw an adult woma female for sale at a show recently that was claimed to have a shot at also being a fire. The seller has been producing some lighter womas from this female and was under the impression that woma might sort of hide or at least obscure fire.

Randy,

"That isn't the same as being proven" you are right 100%, but it HAS been proven to be the most logical theory out there, and at this point, it would take a landslide to disprove this theory, with as much empirical evidence is out there to support it.

PROVING something to be 100% true in genetics is something that is very rarely gonna happen without in depth analysis and a large enough breeding population to work with. Empirical evidence is hard to come by, and like with the spider theory of inheritance, you aren't going to get the most important breedings done (spider x spider), since they equate to less money.

I personally think the Hahaman theory that lesser and whatever turns a lesser into a platy are alleles is almost certainly true. How Hahaman came up with the allele theory years before the phantom 44's and daddy butter pretty much disproved the recessive 2nd gene theory I don’t know. However, I think the idea that there is a recessive hidden 2nd gene floating around in some lesser is still so popular because alleles are new to ball python people and we need a good graphical explanation for the concept to be considered as an alternative to a hidden gene.

Good points Randy, and in my opinion, three most underused/misunderstood ideas are the difference between phenotype and genotype, what alleles are, and the difference between dominant/in-complete dominance/co-dominance

Yes, I think people are going to have to start understanding genotypes to predict the ever increasingly complicated ball python combos. My pet peeves include:

1. People saying there are no het pastels or spiders. The pastels and spiders are hets, they just aren't normal looking like het albinos. Once you understand that they are hets you can remember how to predict their offspring. Any het has a 50/50 chance of passing on the mutation in question, it doesn’t matter if it’s a spider or a pied, the rules of inheritance are the same once you break it down to genotype.
2. The misuse of morph types as genotypes, like saying the dominant form of yellow belly is ivory and the co-dominant form is yellow belly. Yellow belly and Ivory are the phenotypes for the homozygous and heterozygous genotypes. The difference in the way they look relative to each other and normal is why the mutation type is always co-dominant (or maybe incompletely dominant, I'm still not sure we can get that specific just by looking). The mutation type does not change from co-dominant to dominant depending on if you are looking at a het or a homozygous animal. How are people going to understand “dominant” if it’s used to mean two different things. It just means a mutation that dominates the normal version of the same gene and it doesn’t mean homozygous.