Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Some fresh pics of these ghosts. I want them to grow already, lol. The male Specter is starting to show some pink, I can't wait, lol.

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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

Very nice Jorge!....

Those "specter" corns are sure to be real smokers as they mature!

Is that a striped ghost you got at the Repticon in Orlando?, or one of Tim Spuckler's line?....also VERY nice indeed!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Yeah that striped is from Repticon. The other ghost was a gift from Jeff Serrao. I didn't post a pic of the female Specter cause she was in shed. They ae finally taking pinks on their own. I had to get the male eating anoles first, then scented pinks, and now he eats unscented. Maybe now I can make them grow, lol.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

Awesome!,.....yeah, I'm sure they will start taking off and growing like California sea kelp!..LOL!

Look forward to seeing how they color up with the pink too!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

>>Some fresh pics of these ghosts. I want them to grow already, lol. The male Specter is starting to show some pink, I can't wait, lol.

I can tell the third one pictured is a specter, but the second one looks different to me. Is it also from that bloodline?

Whoops, missed the other replies before I posted that last one. The differences are subtle, but a few characteristics seem consistent in the specters based on the few I've seen and I didn't think that girl in the middle looked like one. Nice group you're working with though.

>>Whoops, missed the other replies before I posted that last one. The differences are subtle, but a few characteristics seem consistent in the specters based on the few I've seen and I didn't think that girl in the middle looked like one. Nice group you're working with though.

Thanks! I also have a hypo/strawberry motely male that's het for anery(ghost), but he was in shed. have you noticed the specters to have a certain haed pattern? The two I have almost seem to have the pattern wrap around the head. Infact the male almost looks like it has a helmet.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

>>Thanks! I also have a hypo/strawberry motely male that's het for anery(ghost), but he was in shed. have you noticed the specters to have a certain haed pattern? The two I have almost seem to have the pattern wrap around the head. Infact the male almost looks like it has a helmet.
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>>King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
>> J Sierra

I had a long response typed out, then my computer crashed so I'll just get right to the point this time. From the few I've seen, head pattern does look pretty consistent. Here's a shot of my specter males when they were younger for comparison.

This is an old female Naples ghost-our youngsters probably descended from her or one of her sisters.

Keep an eye on yours for development of yellow coloration within the dorsal saddles. Both of my males have it but the old female doesn't, their parents don't, and one of their clutchmates doesn't. I have seen another older Naples ghost male that had it though (he looked a LOT like my pink male). It's also interesting that my males are clutchmates and one is pink while the other has no pink at all. It's an interesting line to work with for sure, and I'm especially excited to outcross mine to another line of ghosts and see what I get.

It'd be interesting to breed your hypo/strawberry to one since strawberry is supposed to be responsible for all the color on salmon ghosts and snows. I've seen strawberry aneries that didn't look like salmons though, so I don't know if that's all there is to the story. Some suggested that strawberry was at work in the specters, but last I heard it looked like that's actually not the case.

>>>>Thanks! I also have a hypo/strawberry motely male that's het for anery(ghost), but he was in shed. have you noticed the specters to have a certain haed pattern? The two I have almost seem to have the pattern wrap around the head. Infact the male almost looks like it has a helmet.
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>>>>King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
>>>> J Sierra
>>
>>I had a long response typed out, then my computer crashed so I'll just get right to the point this time. From the few I've seen, head pattern does look pretty consistent. Here's a shot of my specter males when they were younger for comparison.
>>
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>>This is an old female Naples ghost-our youngsters probably descended from her or one of her sisters.
>>
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>>Keep an eye on yours for development of yellow coloration within the dorsal saddles. Both of my males have it but the old female doesn't, their parents don't, and one of their clutchmates doesn't. I have seen another older Naples ghost male that had it though (he looked a LOT like my pink male). It's also interesting that my males are clutchmates and one is pink while the other has no pink at all. It's an interesting line to work with for sure, and I'm especially excited to outcross mine to another line of ghosts and see what I get.
>>
>>It'd be interesting to breed your hypo/strawberry to one since strawberry is supposed to be responsible for all the color on salmon ghosts and snows. I've seen strawberry aneries that didn't look like salmons though, so I don't know if that's all there is to the story. Some suggested that strawberry was at work in the specters, but last I heard it looked like that's actually not the case.
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First off, thanks for that pic of the Naples ghost! I hadn't actually seen one before. Do you know what those were bred to to make the Specters? As for the strawberry gene, I've asked the question on several diferent sites and got some interesting answers. It seems it probably isn't the strawberry gene in the specters at least, and it may be attributed to too much in the other pink ghosts also. I got responses from some guys that have already crossed the strawberry into some of these other lines and they don't feel it's the strawberry gene that is making these so pink. It's a bit complicated to say the least, but it will be fun to work with them none the less.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

Did you mean to say Naples Anery? Do you have anymore pics of it?
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

"Did you mean to say Naples Anery? Do you have anymore pics of it?"

She's direct from Kathy Love and is registered on the ACR. Her father is the ghost pictured in the cornsnake manual on page 115. I haven't raised any females from this line, but everyone keeps telling me how much dimorphism there is in coloration between the males and females and all the pictures I've seen back that up.

"First off, thanks for that pic of the Naples ghost! I hadn't actually seen one before. Do you know what those were bred to to make the Specters?"

Naples ghosts are specters-if you have the book and can look at the picture of that male I mentioned, you'll see he looks just like the specters on the market today. He hatched in 1996, so they've been around for about 14 years now. Kathy referred to them as "special Naples line" and when Donovan (assuming you got yours from him like I did) purchased his breeders from her, the deli cups were labeled "SP" for special project. He started calling them specters as a result to distinguish them from other ghosts. I know he has started crossing his to other morphs though, so there could be specters with extra genetics soon.

I spoke with Kathy about these quite a bit earlier this year. The short version of the story is that the original Naples corn was purchased at a pet store in Naples, FL presumably wild caught. That snake and its descendants looked somewhat different to Kathy and she realized that the ghosts produced when that line was crossed to aneries were especially nice. So she continued working with ghosts descended from the Naples corns and the rest is history.

Yeah I got mine from Donovan. Thanks for the info. I knew some of that but you added a little, I do have the Corn Snake Manual, and I just finnished looking at that ghost. It does look a lot like the Specters. I think I remember reading that the corn they found in a petshop turned out to be het for Charcoal too.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

" I think I remember reading that the corn they found in a petshop turned out to be het for Charcoal too"

I have been checking this entire thread out, and your above comment made a lightbulb instantly go off in my head, so I looked into it a minute ago. ....Remember I said something about the "special project"(specter) ghosts originating from anery's off an island just NEXT to Naples, and not Naples itself??. Well, that was a definite mistake on my part, and I got my thoughts crossed up some there from other tid-bits of gene info..LOL!, so I appologize for that, because it was the anery (type B) "charcoals" that originated just off Ft. Meyers on Pine Island next to Ft. Meyers, then the Love's were the first to produce them shortly after. So i.e. the petshop corn probably had the naturally occuring charcoal gene from that precise area anyway. Was the petshop corn a normal phenotype?. It sounds like it was because Kevin earlier states...."when crossed into anery's, they looked especially nice". So I assume it was a normal phenotype animal that was carrying the charcoal gene you mentioned.

Maybe Kevin can elaborate on this too since I don't have the book.(shame on me, I know!..LOL!)

Confusing?....yeah, but no moreso than the "strawberry" thing..LMAO!!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Yeah my head was spining with the whole strawberry chase, lol. One thing is I really like that pic Kevin posted of the Naples ghost! I don't know if the pet shop animal was a normal phenotype? I'll have to find the place it's mentioned in the cornsake manual. Kevin may have more info.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

"Was the petshop corn a normal phenotype?. It sounds like it was because Kevin earlier states...."when crossed into anery's, they looked especially nice". So I assume it was a normal phenotype animal that was carrying the charcoal gene you mentioned.

Maybe Kevin can elaborate on this too since I don't have the book.(shame on me, I know!..LOL!)"

"I don't know if the pet shop animal was a normal phenotype? I'll have to find the place it's mentioned in the cornsake manual. Kevin may have more info."

I hadn't heard that about the charcoals (or I forgot if I did). The information on the Naples corns isn't in the book as far as I know, that's just what Kathy told me. I was a little confused about the phenotype of the original Naples at first, but Kathy cleared it up for me. She said:

"Actually, though the original Naples normals did not have black borders, most of the Naples ghosts have black borders. AFAIK, the original did not have hypo. I think I just used some nice, but typical ghosts, when I bred it into the line...I started breeding the Naples lines back in the early to mid ‘80s. I think I started breeding it to ghosts in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s. It was a long time ago, lol! I believe that the original Naples never showed any sign of being het for anything. But I can’t really remember too many details beyond that. I don’t remember any normal Naples with black borders, though."

If you want to see more from this line, check out the ACR. Here's a link to the female I posted:
http://www.herpregistry.com/acr/Registry.php?idnum=655

Her brother (#674) looks an awful lot like my pink male, so you can really see the dimorphism between the sexes by comparing them. Several half-sibling females are on there as well and all show the dark saddles.

OK i think I got my stories mixed up also. The story I was thinking of was the first Charcoal. It's dscribed on pages 92 and 93 of the Corn Snake Manual. It was an unusual looking Anery from Pine Island and when crossed with another Anery it gave aneries and normals. So on further breedings they discovered it was a separate gene involved. Thanks for the registry info, I'll check those out.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

......now the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place much better!

Thanks for the additional info and link Kevin, and thanks for the verification on the "charcoal" thing too Jorge!

It seems like with many snake gene history's, you have to put on the ol' Sherlock Holmes hat and do some sleuthing to get to the bottom of certain things..LOL!

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Ha haa! Yeah doug, sometimes that's part of the intrigue also. I checked out the registry and looked at all the siblings and half siblings too. I saw some hypos, which I am assuming are the type of hypos that were used to get the ghost for the specters.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

Yeah, I agree, the many different histories of how things originated is another key aspect of why this stuff can be so interesting.

I also checked out all the relatives on the registry too, and there was some nice stuff there.

This is a real nice "special Naples" ghost, especially for being a female!

~Doug

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com