Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is an update to a thread posted a month ago about a wild caught black rat snake found. http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=1537310,1537310

It was confirmed this week that the snake is a male via probing by a breeder. The following photos are of the snake 1 month after capture and with him all cleaned up and looking fairly nice. He has been able to rehydrate himself, get a few meals into his belly, and shed skin. With improved health, colors have started coming out in him. The coral (orangey-red) color on him is now very bright in spots whereas before had been very dull/pale.

Injuries are healing nice too. Left eye injury may cause some loss of vision still too soon to tell (eye has some cloudy spots). Also treating with panacur for a very heavy pinworm parasite load. His behavior with food indicates he was probably attacked by some critter that was mouse-like as he ran away from f/t mice I tried giving him. He did ultimately settle down and cautiously eat a small f/t rat once he was assured it was dead and not going to go after him. After a couple of rats he finally got brave enough to eat some f/t mice.

14 photos in all. Will be breaking them down into small groups for those who may be on dial up and can't handle all pics in one post.

Pics 1-3

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pics 4-6

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Pics 7-9

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pics 10-14

Eyes are dark and blue rimmed - not pink/red like an albino should be. I don't know for certain if the snake is ultimately a T-positive albino or some type of leucistic. Any thoughts?

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left out a pic. this one shows his injured left eye. The scarring isn't so noticeable in the photo, but is when seen up close in person. The cloudiness of the eye also makes the photo look more blurry in that area than it really is.

dunno why the sky looks pink in the pics after I posted them to the forum. Photos looked when I uploaded them. I double checked the pics in each of the posts and while the sky is all funky weird, the snake still appears true to color.

That snake is truly wild. That's just . . . awesome! I hesitate to say T amel. Doesn't quite seem right there. But it does seem like something new!

Where exactly was he found? Is it an intergrade area?

-Ronnie Nocera

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>>Where exactly was he found? Is it an intergrade area?
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Found in southern Maryland and there is no intergrade. We have only black rats here.

Yet another Southern Maryland black rat morph! Seriously! I'm moving to Maryland!

>>This is an update to a thread posted a month ago about a wild caught black rat snake found. http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=1537310,1537310
>>
>>It was confirmed this week that the snake is a male via probing by a breeder. The following photos are of the snake 1 month after capture and with him all cleaned up and looking fairly nice. He has been able to rehydrate himself, get a few meals into his belly, and shed skin. With improved health, colors have started coming out in him. The coral (orangey-red) color on him is now very bright in spots whereas before had been very dull/pale.
>>
>>Injuries are healing nice too. Left eye injury may cause some loss of vision still too soon to tell (eye has some cloudy spots). Also treating with panacur for a very heavy pinworm parasite load. His behavior with food indicates he was probably attacked by some critter that was mouse-like as he ran away from f/t mice I tried giving him. He did ultimately settle down and cautiously eat a small f/t rat once he was assured it was dead and not going to go after him. After a couple of rats he finally got brave enough to eat some f/t mice.
>>
>>14 photos in all. Will be breaking them down into small groups for those who may be on dial up and can't handle all pics in one post.
>>
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Roberts Realm Of Reptile Research
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Thanks,

I opened my mouth and out flowed a melody black.

First off, I'd like to say congratulations!

That animal can only be best described as a "paradox" albino!. it has ZERO melanin except for the eyes,...which by the way are perfectly normal colored, iris and pupil. Most paradox albino animals produced in the hobby so far have random blobs speckles, or patches of melanin on the body itself. Your animal however, had it's body unable to produce melanin, but the locus responsible for the eye pigmentation was not affected!,..very strange indeed!,...but there it is!

We understand a certain amount about genetics, but that's all,...genetics, and nature in general has her own set of rules that we will probably NEVER fully understand.

1) it's not an "extreme hypo", because there's zero melanin anywhere on the dorsum or ventral surface.

2) It's not a tyrosinase positive animal either, because it would still have the melanin pre-cursor and produce a purplish/caramel coloration where the dark pigment was supposed to be.

3) It's not a "FULLY" tyrosinase negative animal either(amelanistic), because by definition, it has to have NO melanin, and the eyes still do.

4) It can only be the strange one-of-a-kind "oddball" anomoly known as a genetic "paradox" albino, which quite literally means "one that possesses seemingly contradictory qualities".

That is indeed a very unique and special animal, and can only be best described as a "paradox" albino. Of course if this genetic trait is found to be an inheritable recessive trait, which it probably is, and hets are later produced, and they are "back-bred" to either each other, or a female sibling back to the parent and more of these are created, you will have free reign to call it whatever is fitting, and less confusing to the public.

Although it is indeed a paradox, the herp hobby already is familiar with the word, and would probably associate the word paradox with the forms that are already known to the hobby that have random dark patches here and there, etc..., so you could call it something like "Black-eyed" albino Black Ratsnake, or something like that so it wouldn't get confused with the other types in the hobby. Another reason why that might be a good "coined" name, is the fact that there are already "pink-eyed" leucistic Texas Ratsnakes in the hobby. As a matter of fact, I have a very deep blood/ruby red eyed leucistic Texas Rat, and neither the seller, nor I was aware of this until several months later when I thought I saw something strange from a certain angle one day, and sure enough,....they were deep ruby-red!

Anyway, that is an AWESOME snake!....I hope you can breed it and make more for the hobby!

best regards, ~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

I got this lil guy from a vendor/ breeder for free....Was produce from a amel rusty x amel rusty blk rat .....I do believe that the leucistic came from a TX

Wow!,.....the deep "ruby-red" eyes on that one are pretty intense!

Yes, the leucistic gene started in what was supposed to be a Texas Rat,..although later on a leucistic Black Rat was captured in Ohio,...and they too have been available for some time as well.......I'm sure by now there are some in the hobby that have mixed lineage too....Since there meristics(scale counts) are virtually identical, anyone would be hard-pressed to distinguish the two if they were looking at truly unknown examples.

After all, if the scalation is the same, and they are both pure white, what left is there to go on!..LOL!

I like your animal, it has some neat orange colored hues!

~best regards, ~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

>>First off, I'd like to say congratulations!
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>> That animal can only be best described as a "paradox" albino!.

While the snake right now is indeed a "paradox", I would be hesitant to call it a paradox albino since as the way I understand the term to be currently used in snakes, there should be some black speckles in some random spot/s on the body and there is none to be found. And I agree certainly not a hypo because of the obvious lack of melanin on the body. I more or less ruled out the T-negative since there are no red/pink eyes. The closest I came to was the T-positive, but it didn't match up perfectly as there should have been some "brown" leaking into the color of the body in addition to the eyes (if I am understanding the genetics behind it), but the scales are a pearly/opal-like white not a tan-cream. The only "lavender" I can really see is the skin between the scales and part of the tongue. Leucistic is a possibility, but again not a perfect match. From what I have seen from pictures of other people's lucy black rats the snakes are more or less white on white straight from the egg and this snake is coral on white.

paradox leucistic maybe? lol

I kinda liked Upscales' theory of a Maltese dilution gene, but if I was understanding the genetics of that, then the eyes are not involved (i.e. they stay normal), but the snake should then technically be a blue-lavender color (from the dilution of the black-brown) instead of white.

The snake is by no means full grown yet and with normal black rats, the colors/patterns continuously change as they grow to full size / adulthood, so it's possible this snake will also follow that pattern and keep changing and messing with my head for another year or so.

I'm working on trying to find a nice adult normal het for nothing local female to breed him to, but so far a friend has only found a wild male. All other black rats we've seen have been DOR this year.

It’s the first known Maltese dilution trait, a disorder of pigment production, seen in this hobby. (There are other things that may be this trait, but not recognized yet) Your snake is fairly valuable. It’s one of the most exciting things seen in awhile. I would call it a Maltese Black Rat, and call that one “Adam”.

>>It’s the first known Maltese dilution trait, a disorder of pigment production, seen in this hobby. (There are other things that may be this trait, but not recognized yet) Your snake is fairly valuable. It’s one of the most exciting things seen in awhile. I would call it a Maltese Black Rat, and call that one “Adam”.

If I understand the nature of the maltese dilution, should the snake actually be blue (diluted black color) and/or lilac (diluted brown color) instead of white?

I think the maltese turning black to blue is particular to cats, which is the most common reference for this trait. I think that is only true with fur, so a snake isn’t going to turn blue expressing this trait. I think it is more widely felt to be an albino trait that does not affect the eyes, so they call it a cutaneous albino. The reverse of that is the ocular albino, which has normal color all over and ruby red eyes. Very freaky trait as well, and one that was seen on the milksnake forum about six months ago or so. Also, the maltese or cutaneous albino trait can affect each color, yellow, black, red, etc and be every shade from hypomelanistic to bone white albino. It is a generalized cutaneous depigmentation. The Jelly Brooks could be a maltese version having a problem expressing Tyrosinase due to the T negative gene. That’s why I think this trait is more common than we know, why some traits that express as similar looking aren’t compatible, and why things don’t work out like we think sometimes. This is another form of albino that may combine with other traits and reveal some really cool stuff.

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