What a HUGE day! The "mystery" Pinstripe has hatched, and wow! What an amazing looking snake! It looks almost like a Genetic Stripe with a bit more side pattern. And the colour is intense in person, pictures do not do the snake justice.
Here's the story. I bred multiple males (Spider, Pastel, Pinstripe) to this normal female. Since the Pinstripe was last seen breeding with her, I hoped that at least some of the babies would be Pins. The first baby pipping out was a normal. No surprise there. The next one I cut open, and it looked like a Pinstripe. I was happy. But upon closer inspection, it looked like more than just a Pinstripe. The pattern was way off. The more I peeked in at it, the more it looked different than your typical Pinstripe. There are two normals in the clutch, as well as another "normal" that is completely striped with a messed up side pattern. There was also an egg that died, and when I cut it open, it also looked like the striped baby. So the total count of surviving babies is 1 "Mystery" Pinstripe, 1 "Mystery" Normal, and 2 Normals. I'll put up pictures of the "Mystery" Normal once it's out of the egg.
That was the good news.
The bad news is that the "Mystery" Pinstripe has a slight kink in its spine. There were some temperature fluctuations during the early part of incubation for this clutch, so I'm thinking it might be a developmental deformity. The parents weren't related at all, so I'm hoping it wasn't a genetic deformity.
So maybe the "normal" mom is carrying some hidden gene? Maybe both the parents are both heterozygous for some recessive gene? Maybe the appearance is simply due to environmental fluctuations during incubation? Either way, you can bet I'll be breeding those two together again to see if the trait is genetic. Stay tuned, this is just the beginning!
