If I was to breed my male spider to a normal female, is there a possibility that I get spiders or just het spiders?
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A spider to a normal?
MannyRottie
Oct 31, 2007 12:31 PM
Replies (4)
hmj75
Oct 31, 2007 01:05 PM
half will be spiders and half normals........If your lucky with the odds you get more spiders.....I am hoping for the same.
alicecobb
Oct 31, 2007 03:28 PM
Every egg has a 50% chance of being a spider so most people would say you should get 1/2 spiders when you breed a spider to a normal. Since a spider ball python is not recessive (like albinos, clowns, ghosts, pieds, etc.) you can't produce het spiders - there is no such thing. Hope that helps.
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Alice Cobb
Florida Reptile Room
Paul Hollander
Oct 31, 2007 05:05 PM
>you can't produce het spiders - there is no such thing.
There are het spiders; they just don't look normal. Any snake that has a spider mutant gene paired with a normal gene is a het spider. General useage is to call these snakes spiders rather than het spiders. Nevertheless, technically, they are heterozygous for the spider mutant gene.
Looking normal is not part of the standard definition of "heterozygous". Look it up if you do not believe me. Stedman's Medical Dictionary is on the web at http://dictionary.reference.com
Paul Hollander
RandyRemington
Nov 02, 2007 08:50 PM
Yes, spiders really are hets!
Another thing that heterozygous doesn't mean (in addition to not meaning necessarily normal looking) is half way to something different looking.
As soon as some ball python people get past the idea that hets must always look normal because that's the way it worked out with recessive mutations they latch on to the idea of a pastel as a het for super pastel. If pinstripe turns out to be dominant and the homozygous pinstripe looks just like the pinstripes we see today there will still be heterozygous for pinstripe animals. The pastels are heterozygous for the pastel mutation, not heterozygous for the super pastel phenotype. It’s a subtle distinction and not terribly important. But I'm happy just to see people understanding that they are any sort of het because understanding genotypes will help in predicting the outcome of the complicated combinations that are starting to be possible for the masses.
