How about a little controversy?
Not that I am attracted to it or anything. LOL I would like to make a few observations regarding the widely occurring aberrancies that are occurring in various bloodlines that involve Hypos. This I will do without naming those Bloodlines except the ones that I myself have originated so as not to give the impression that I am picking on anyone. Which I certainly am not.
First let me start by saying this. The first Jungle Boas came into the country from Sweden 14 or 15 years ago. It was more than ten years before we had a fairly good handle on the how, the when and why this mutation works. That is a fact. The other fact is we still don’t know exactly what’s going on with it. In my opinion the Jungle first and foremost, is fundamentally a form of Hypomelanistic. Evidence the clear quantum leap seen on the Jungle Paradigms and Jungle Caramels produced by Big Mike last year. Those babies were far more than just additionally aberrant or only more colorful. They clearly reached another level in lightness as far as melanin influence is concerned. The only exceptions to this look are the really wiggy Jungles that are produced. The vast majority of them tend to lean to the dark side but that may just be a function of additional pattern. Be that as it may, I digress. It is only in the last two or three years that we have realized that brightly colored offspring from Jungle breedings need not show any aberrancy to throw Jungle babies. So why do we assume that anything new that pops up must have a complete explanation within 15 minutes of first showing itself? This is silly. So here are my thoughts regarding some of the new mutations that have popped up.
There are a number of bloodlines that involve pattern abnormalities that are clearly genetic. I could name no fewer than six distinct bloodlines that include crazy aberrant offspring that clearly are genetic. Now, since we did not know how precisely how to identify a Jungle for more than ten years, (I would say we still do not know that entirely) I submit that the selection of exactly which offspring from some of these other breedings carry the gene(s) necessary to reproduce more of these is or involves some guess work. There are those who consider themselves smarter than most of us that immediately consider anything that produces aberrant babies of any type, except of course the Jungles, to be simply carrying polygenic genetic abnormalities. This I contend is normally a function of wanting to avoid giving credit to something that clearly deserves it. I believe it is possible that some of these are polygenic, but we just don’t know that answer. They may be just as likely to be dominant or co-dominant. We just don’t know. Several have shown second generation breedings that certainly tend to make an honest thinking person think that there may be a co-dominant gene involved. My experience so far involving many breedings gives results that are first in a dominant fashion numbers wise. I think others have done more of the second generation breedings that point to a co-dominant mutation. But the skeptics will remain.
My own “Nova Boas” are one of the bloodlines that I refer to. Here are a few of them:
Here is a non-hypo male produced in this first litter:
This is the first Boa from this line. His mother is the original Monster Tail Female. He is the Father of the first litter of Nova Boas.
It is my opinion that all of these aberrant animals that have popped up in both Hypo and non-hypo offspring, may very well be the same mutation. They seem to have come from the Hypo Mutation that originated with Dr. David Hardy who caught the first Hypo in Panama in the early 1980’s. I am not sure exactly how to prove that these mutations are the same as it probably can’t be done. Be that as it may. We are all in the early stages of making more cool animals from these aberrant offspring and I look forward to doing more of it in the future.
Here is the latest result of one of those breedings that I was fortunate to see babies from a couple weeks ago. Here is a female I kept that had many characteristics that made me wonder is something strange was going on:
She has this odd yellow color as a baby and was missing many or her “saddle points” like many good Jungles. She is also aberrantly patterned. She is about 8’ long in this picture that was taken about 7 months ago. Below is a picture of the father of this recent litter:
Unfortunately the father proved to be a Super Hypo so I didn’t get any non-hypo offspring. There were however 29 babies of which ten have very significant aberrancies that could be “Supers” for this mutation. There is no way to know for sure, but it does work number wise with the outcome we had. Here are a number of those babies.
Here was one I thought was pretty interesting but not aberrant at all.
This is all great fun you know. I have another litter from this particular line bred to the non-hypo Nova Boa shown above due in a number of weeks. I can’t wait to see those puppies! OK. I have babbled long enough.
-----
Jeff Ronne Sr
The Boaphile
Director USARK
Originator of Boaphile Plastics
The Boaphile Boa Site
