Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I bread a Striped Albino Rat Female with an Albino Rat male. A few days after i had the rat snakes together i threw a striped amel corn male in with the rat female. When the eggs were laid there were 7 total. 4 were big like rat snake eggs, but 3 were small like corn eggs. They started hatching yesterday and the small eggs hatched out what appeared to be amel corns (not really looking like a rat corn cross). The rest of the 4 eggs were all albino rat snakes but they looked very light coloring, like a pearl, very different from hatchling albino rat snakes. I was wondering if anyone knew how common it is for there to be 2 fathers to one female like that. Does anyone know if these albino rats are some different form of albino or just normal albinos? Thanks

-Shawn

Yes, this is very common. Last year my female albino blotchless Yellow Ratsnake mated with a Greenish Ratsnake, and with a brindle Black Ratsnake a few days later. The hatchlings turned out to be the offspring of both males.

Heard about multiple paternity before its been well documented but never actually seen evidence of it - very interesting - in more ways than one - as the cornsnake amelanistic gene is compatiable with the Ratsnake amelanistic gene. You got any photos of the female and males parents ?

Sue x
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The Ratsnake Foundation Online Society
The Reptile Hobby Survey

Here are the pictures of all the parents. The Albino Rat is the male that bread with the female first. The Striped Amel male is the corn that bread with her a few days after she bread with the male albino rat. The female is a lil beat up in this picture. She ended up getting blister disease after laying her eggs, but she is doing great now and pulling out of it. I am doing everything i can to get her back to helth to breed her next year. The odd thing is that the albino gene carried over in the rat corn crosses but the striped gene did not. I am going to keep them and try to prove the genetics of them out in a few years. They are different looking than most albino rat corn crosses ive seen (amel barids corns) because they look mainly like amel corn snakes.

Hey Sue, that is interesting about the compatibility of the genes. Also, I saw some interesting evidence for polypaternity before, someone bred 2 albino boas, then separated and placed the female with another "female", discovered that they were breeding, and ended up with something to the effect of 21 out of 22 babies being normal and only one albino! Started a debate over normal genes with less inbreeding resulting in stronger sperm and therefore a higher number of fertilized eggs in the female.
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Nick Puder
www.rnpreptiles.com

What this story truly represents is the general lack of a knowledge of biology on that forum.

That is a very funny story.

yeah, dont know how its funny, but yes, there is a lack of knowledge of the genitics of snakes. Further research and breeding is needed to gain a prespective of why this happened.