Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, what i want to know is what i would get when i breed a het albino male to a reg female. From what i have read i would get hets for albino, but would i get all of the hets or how do you know.
Thanks

if you bred a het albino to a normal female, roughly half the clutch would be het albino, there is no way of telling them apart, hence 50% het albino.

Albinism is what's called a "simple recessive" trait. It is controlled by one gene (or really one set of genes). If a trait is simple resessive (SR), an individual must have two versions of the gene for the trait in order to express that trait. This means that in order to get an albino ball python, an individual must receive one "albinism allele" (an allele is just word that means "version of a gene" from its mom and one from its dad. If an individual only receives an albinism allele from one parent and a "pigmented" allele (i.e. not albino) from the other parent, it will appear normal (not albino) but will be able to pass on the albinism allele to its offspring. This is the deal with your snake. If it is 100% heterozygous for albinism, there is a 50% chance that it will pass its albinism allele to its offspring. What does this mean for your breeding project? Well, it's best demonstrated with a diagram called a Punnet square but, basically, the probability of getting hets from your snake are as follows:

Assuming your snake is devinitely het for albinism:

If you breed it with another het: 25% of the offspring will be albino and the other 75% will have a 66% chance of being hets for albino.

If you breed your snake with a "normal" non-het individual, all offspring will appear normal and 50% of them will carry the gene for albinism.

If a snake (or any animal/plant) doesn't express a trait (like albinism) but carries the gene for it, the only way to know for certain whether it carries a gene is to do genetic testing.

Hope this helps.

thanks a lot for the info

check it out!
Joe Pociask Pythons - Genetics