Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I love these axanthic Sonorans....... Cant get enough of them.

byron.d

Beautiful snake. I didn't know that axanthics were out there. I just thought that there were ghosts being produced and that somehow the axanthic had been skipped. Could someone please explain. Thanks so much.

Take care,
Jeff Port

Jeff, in order to have a ghost you have to have anery or axanthic.A ghost is a combo of 2 genes anery/axanthic and hypo.
Now problem with the sonoran line is that the animals they are calling ghosts are probablyjust axanthic.The name "ghost" was slapped on them a long time ago because of the way they looked and not for the genes they had.

Anyway, because the hypo gene in this line is co-dom you can't tell if the snake is just axanthic or if its ghost or if they are all just ghost because of the co-dom.

Other snakes its pretty easy to seperate them but in the sonoran line.

Hope this helps,
L8r

Shannon,
Yeah, I understand that a "ghost" is supposed to be an axanthic/anerythristic hypo. I had never seen any sonorans referred to as just axanthic/anerythristic. That is what threw me about this post. Actually the picture in this post does appear to be a axanthic and not a "ghost" as it is darker than most of the "ghosts" I have seen. Thanks for your input.

Takec care,
Jeff Port

Jeff. I think Shannon's explanation is on the money. I've seen them called both axanthics and ghosts for years now. To me they look like axanthics because they dont have that 'wash' that ghosts have.. That being said, I've also seen a few from this same line (envy) that were very, very washed out - like a ghost.

I just call 'em like I see 'em.

byron.d

Byron,
Thanks for the additional clarification. It is much appreciated.

Take care,
Jeff Port

I just posted a clutch pic of a Ghost X wild caught breeding.
Not one person said anything, which is no surprise. However I can't help to be a bit annoyed because for one thing, people love to question the amount of inbreeding in morphs as if it is a bad thing and when people offer outcrossed hets 95% of people buying the snakes will still take the morphs.
Another thing is the speculation that the light and bright ones are Hypos in the Envy line initially came from the breeding of a Blizzard to a normal and getting nice looking light bright and clean babies. I am not holding my breath and won't be disapointed either way but I bet some nice light babies come from this clutch I recently got. You can see the mother in the pic is quite dark and not at all flashy like the more commonly seen [in the hobby] yellower animals.
I did this project for myself, to learn more about this complex line. I have a feeling these babies will not exactly fly off the shelf though..... yet the subject of line breeding will come up here time and time again.
Just figured I'd mention this since the original post started heading toward this topic.
Tom Stevens
-----
TomsSnakes.com