Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i thought paradox, ment "One exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects" or pretty much a ball python with unexsplainable physical characteristics? i was told "paradox is a "morph" with a "leaky gene" causing it to display normal colortaion and pattern along with its "morph" color."

That is similar to how I understand it. Basically, there are portions of the snake where the morph genes are not "activated", causing those portions to be a different color or pattern than it should be. I could go into more detail involving embryology and Evo Devo, but suffice to say that these characteristics are not usually considered heritable because the gametes of the snake are not affected, just its appearance.
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3.4 ball pythons
1.1 kingsnakes
0.1 crazy cat
?!.?! ASFs
1.0 husband

I love paradox snakes
they are so cool to see in person
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Misty Sprouse Albino Ball Pythons

One theory is that paradox are chimeras. Sort of the opposite of twins. The idea is that instead of one baby splitting into two (identical twins), a chimera is created when two babies merge into one. If both of the babies are the same phenotype, the chimera would look like that phenotype and you would probably never notice anything odd about it. Chimera’s may happen regularly with normal looking siblings without ever being detected. But as clutches that can produce more than one phenotype become more common we may be seeing chimeras of dissimilar siblings making the paradox look where parts of the skin are from one phenotype and other parts are from the other phenotype (often the normal with a morph phenotype). The reproductive organs could be from either phenotype but under the chimera theory you wouldn't expect the accident that created the paradox to be passed on. Maybe the tendency for chimeras could run in a line sort of like twins running in a family but you couldn't count on reproducing it every time.

Of course this theory could be totally wrong and something different could be going on to create paradox.

Could be a mutation affected by 4-5 different genes also. Look how long it took to find out that Super Stripe are Mystic with YB. I mean, it wasn't something clear.

If there is 4-5 different gene related to paradox, and that those are not "visual" gene. It will be hard to prove. That might also explain why it pop here and there once in a while without explanation. It's seems to be more frequent with the YB (ivories) than others too.
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love this world, don't hate it.

"Look how long it took to find out that Super Stripe are Mystic with YB"

If Specter and/or Whirlwind where the same as Mystic then since Mystic appears to be compatible with Mojave wouldn't you expect Mojave to do something extraordinary with yellow belly too? Also, Anthony McCain founded both Mystic and Whirlwind so I would expect he would have noticed and told us if they where the same.
But good point on the multi gene thing. There are reports of cattle herds where selection for twinning has strongly increased the frequency of that “accident”. So there certainly could be a genetic tendency for paradox and it might not be a single gene. Either way if there is also an accidental dimension it might not be reproducible 100% of the time but if even the tendency is a multi gene thing then it could be particularly hard to track.