Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here is the original Silver found at Black Gap in the early 2000s by Ric Blair, Shannon, and Aaron.

She was bred to a normal male found in the same area. And this is a pair from her that I now own. Last year they had one baby that looks like its turning into a silver. These silvers are diffent than the othe silver line. And not fully proven out yet. But a year cool project indeed!
Thanks Chris Flowers

Sounds like a fun project! Cant wait to see what happens.

beautiful!!! i wish i had a pair or 2 of those!!! NICE!!!
~kin
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~Sober Serpents~
www.freewebs.com/soberserpents
Corns, Creamsicles, A Black Rat, Thayeri, Cal Kings, A Jungle Corn, A pair of Ball Pythons, A Bearded dragon, Leopard Geckos, Green Anoles, a Snapping turtle, and a white cheeked mud turtle

Nice Chris. Good luck with that project.
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Randy Whittington

Good luck on that project Chris, those are some of my favorite snakes!

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Todd Hughes

It is a cool project, but I think the jury's still out on whether it should be called a "Silver" or not. The problem is that so many people have found interesting wild subocs and cried "Silver, silver, silver!!!", when, come to later find out from an expert, they were actually "Gray" phase subocs.

The difference is in the genetics, and usually in the color also, but through multiple additive alleles, selective pressure can create several versions of the same basic phenotype with different genetic backgrounds. There are about seven or eight different "Gray" phased animals in my book from various localities, and their phenotype is most likely an example of polygenic inheritance.

You can usually see the difference between them and true homozygous recessive Axanthics. I tend to think that Aaron's animal is either an extremely gray animal and a product of polygenic inheritance or it could be a new recessive trait that hasn't been proved yet.

The thing is...with Axanthics of most species (all species, in fact, that I know of), the trait is simple recessive and the Axanthic suboc babies are silvery blue right from birth. They don't "turn" into silvery animals whatsoever...they're born with the phenotype, and their Steel Blue color is, to me, quite different from any of the Gray phased animals.

The Gray phase do, however, ontogenetically turn more gray as they mature. That's why I think this could be a Gray animal. There's also a different photo of Aaron's snake in my book on page 69, and it looks dingy gray, not Silver, like the Axanthics. But I hope I'm wrong...an Axanthic Black Gap would be killer!!

It's certainly wicked cool whatever it is.

Here's a pic of Aaron's that he took.

And here's a pic of a Normally-patterned Axanthic (aka Silver) baby with two siblings, showing the difference in color from the first photo.

Dusty R
Suboc.com

So if it was infact a "grey" is that a ressive gene? Meanning mine are het for grey? Man I hope I get eggs this year so I can prove something out.

I think Dusty was saying the grays are polygenic. That means controlled by more than one gene. The easiest example of polygenic to understand is human skin color. Human skin color is controoled by more than one gene. lets use solely Caucasian people. You can have fair skinned white people,dark olive skinned Mediterranean white people, and everything in between. The color is controlled by more than one gene...and its an additive effect. That means the more gene s influencing the trait, the greater the effect. Hope that helps.
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God Bless Evolution.

and I couldn't agree more with Dusty. The male I have has shed three times since I got him from Shannon and each time it appears to look more grey than the previous time. Nice snake, no complaints but not silver. I've seen silver normals and they look entirely different. I will say this about the pair I have....FIESTY!!

The "silver" was found by Ric and me only. The normal male that was used to bred to it was found by Shannon and I and was an orange phase.

I have produced 2 or 3 clutches of F1's and none of them were silver colored. None of the ones I held back or gave to friends, from those F1 breedings, have gained any silver color at all.

Last year, 2007 was the first time I produced any F2's. Those breeding were of 2 "unproven het" sons bred back to their "silver" mom and of those same 2 "unproven het" sons bred to their "unproven het" sister. None of the resulting F2 babies were obviously "silver" at hatching but several had silvery tones on the head-neck region and towards the tail. All faded to normal color after 1 or 2 sheds but a couple appeared to be somewhat lighter colored. Not silvery, just kinda pale biege. I have retained the lightest one, a male, and it remains to be seen whether he will in fact turn silver or not.

As far as what to call mine, I initially refered to the wc female as a "silver colored/normal patterned". Only later and when speaking with people familiar with her backround did I ever abbreviate that to "silver".
I will say this, I have seen some cb silver blondes that have a somewhat brown tone on the heads, much like my wc "silver" female has.