Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is the Carmel Albino gene the same as the standard albino gene? Will I get the same results from pairng a het carmel albino to het albino.

Just curious.

Thanks
Brandon

Not the same.

If you breed those hets together, you will get 50% possible double hets for Caramel Albino and Albino, with some normals thrown in the mix.
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www.HeathersHerps.com

-Ohh, what a Lady-

Balls for Life, Baby!

To summarize

You could get:

Normals
Poss Hets for Albino
Poss Hets for Caramel Albino
Poss Double Hets for Caramel Albino and Albino

All looking Normal
-----
www.HeathersHerps.com

-Ohh, what a Lady-

Balls for Life, Baby!

As far as I know, no one has crossed homozygous caramel to homozygous albino and reported the results.

It's widely assumed that they will not be compatible as has been reported for breeding albino X lavender and lavender X caramel.

However, years ago there was a case reported of albinos popping up in the descendents of one of the original imported caramels. The most accepted explanation was that wild caught caramel just happened to also be het for albino.

An alternative explanation could be that caramel and albino are alleles with the caramel||albino looking like a caramel. Breeding homozygous animals of the two together should quickly prove or disprove this possible explanation. If they are different mutations of different genes that cross would be expected to produce normal looking double hets. But if they are different mutations of the same gene (like mojave and lesser) then there would be no normal copies of the common gene between the homozygous parents so the babies would likely look somewhere between typical caramel and regular albino.

But because a breedable albino female is still very valuable and it's generally assumed that caramel and albino aren't compatible and the eventual double homozygous caramel albino would look albino there apparently hasn't been any rush to try this cross. I bred two possible hets back in 2004 and got all normals but don't know if I had either gene much less both. So, by breeding your het albino X het caramel most would expect that you would produce normal looking 25% chance double hets but if it turns out that caramel and albino are alleles you might produce 25% chance albino|| caramels and these might look like really nice caramels. However, there would be many who would explain this as your albino het just happened to also be het caramel possibly a descendent of the mentioned imported caramel. So maybe best to wait for someone to breed the homozygous animals together and report the results to settle the allele theory once and for all.