Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the limit on how many morphs you could put into one Ball? Like a Spinner Blast is 3 morphs in one snake. I'm curious what is the most morphs anyone has managed to get in one snake. Would you get to a point where it would create an unhealthy animal to have too many morph genes or where it would just be such low odds of getting one that it would be impossible from the mathematical odds point of view?

I'm no expert here, so I can't tell you how many morphs you actually can put into one, but as far as the math, that I can help with. With 1 gene, there are 4 possible combinations in a punnett square for each offspring and 3 actual combinations of AA, Aa, and aa.. For example, if you have two parents that are both heterozygous for that gene, then you would have say an Aa and Aa combination of alleles. This would give you the possible combinations of AA, Aa, Aa, and aa. Moving up to 2 genes, this gives you 16 combinations in a punnett square, but only 9 actual combinations as some will be the same. Two parents heterozygous for each parent would give you AaBb and AaBb. Combinations are AABB, AABb, AAbb, AaBB, AaBb, Aabb, aaBB, aaBb, aabb. Moving up to 3 genes brings it up to 64 in the punnett square and 27 actual combinations. AABBCC, AABBCc, AABBcc, AABbCC, AABbCc, AABbcc, AAbbCC, AAbbCc, AAbbcc, AaBBCC, AaBBCc, AaBBcc, AaBbCC, AaBbCc, AaBbcc, AabbCC, AabbCc, Aabbcc, aaBBCC, aaBBCc, aaBBcc, aaBbCC, aaBbCc, aaBbcc, aabbCC, aabbCc, aabbcc.

So as you see, the actual number of gene combinations that you can achieve is basically n^3 where n is the number of genes you are breeding for. So if you take it to 4 genes, you're moving up from 27 combinations the whole way to 81 just by adding one gene. Then from there up to 243 combinations.

If you'd like to really see an example go HERE and enter 4 genes. Just call them 1, 2, 3, and 4, and put the alleles in as A/a and A/a, B/b and B/b, etc. You'll see at the bottom how low the percentages get for all of the gene combinations.

I guess what I'm saying is, it would really be possible to breed for any number of morphs as were available, but actually being able to produce what you want, and even keep track of what genes all of the offspring are carrying is a whole separate matter. And as I said before, I have no idea if this would lead to any kind of health concerns or not.