Reptile & Amphibian Forums

where's the red and yellow? i have seen hundreds of longnose but never anything like this. the pics are bad but this thing is stunning black and pure white in person. and it's eyes are a bluish grey color instead of the normal reddish orange. the normal longnose in the pics is just for comparison.

Thats a resessive gene called Anerythristic or Axanthic. Both names are the reduction of the xanthaphores that produce the red and yellow pigments. Anerythristic is primarily used to describe the reduction of red in color and Axanthic is primarily used to describe the reduction of yellow in color. So beings the color the snake is missing the most is red it'd be considered Anerythristic.

Where did you come across it? I wasn't aware of Anery longnoses out there, or did you catch it? If you cought it than it could be quite a nice even profitable find. Research how the recessive genes work and breed it. Good luck.

i caught it while out herping a couple nights ago about ten miles from my house in west Tx. i was definitely considering breeding it but didn't really think there was a market for longnoses.

Black and white ones are fairly common here in AZ. They look almost like Cal Kings

I've never seen them for sale at any of the shows. With the color absent I'm still inclined to believe it's an Anerythristic.

i looked up some of the black and white longnoses from az but they look more banded and all the ones i could find still had traces of red in them where this guy is mottled on the sides and snow white w/o any traces of red or yellow at all.

I don't know anything about them. If all of the wild black and whites have some red colors than they aren't anerythristic. If the one you have is anerythristic, which I'm not saying it is, Although the way to prove it is to breed it with a normal and all the offspring will look normal then you breed it with one of the offspring and statistically half of those offspring will appear normal and half will appear Anerythristic.

Please try for much cleaner shots, especially of the head and eyes. I have a few from Brewster county that have a pink wash but no red.
-----
Todd Hughes

my camers is ancient so better shots probably aren't going to happen but there is no hint of pink or red at all. if anyone is in the midland/odessa area i would be happy to show it to you in person and maybe if they have a better camera we can take some more pics.

I have collected dozens in west texas its anry I betcha.
-----
Archie Bottoms

Maybe someone will breed one with a normal then back to prove out if it's actually a recessive trait. I'm sure someone probably has but to find the person will be difficult unless they come to us. If there are alot of them out there with highly reduced red colors it may actually be technically Hypoerythristic just like the anery hondourans which are technically Hypoerythristic but whoever produced them decided that Anery is much easier to say haha. So it is possible this is more of a reduction (Hypo) rather than a total elimination of (An). Both normally being a recessive gene I'm very curious now as of if it is. Beings this is common in the wild maybe it's actually a codom gene? Maybe someone should post this question in the genetics forums??????

Looks like a beautiful snake but,it would be nice to see a close-up clear pic of it's head! Jeff

i should have better pics tomorrow evening. my buddy is supposed to bring over his camera and take some for me.

it took a while but here they are.

This is actually not a rare occurrence at all. I was breeding longnose snakes for about 8 years and some of mine were R. Lecontei and some were the texas subspecies. They use to consider another species called Leclaris that was all white and black, but if you breed two tri colors or a tri color and white and black. You get mixed clutches with no pattern of how they were created. They aren't anery, they are just a color phase. They are so variable that some have less bands and some red and some don't have any red. Very cool find though!