Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A while back I mentioned that I used to have a pair of leucistic s. pines from Mark Bell linage that were as white as leucistic TX rats...no one seemed to buy it.

I also mentioned that a friend still had one of their offspring, so I went to his place and took these pics.

It's leucistic...not albino. The eyes are not red, although he got some red eye from the camera.

white pine

wp

Dean
Thanks for posting pics. I bought in to your post that you mentioned Dean. I mentioned in my post that Mark Bell had some very white southern pines. The URL to my post is below. I just haven't bought into the leucistic southern pines being the result of a recessive gene as is the case with the leucistic Texas rat snake. Their phenotype fits the description of leucistic, but I still believe they are the result of selective breeding of patternless southern pines. If someone has some verifiable data and lineage showing them to be the result of a recessive gene, I am certainly open on the issue. As it stands now, I still stand behind my post and think I bought into your post that Mark Bell produced some white southern pines that were as white as leucistic Texas rat snakes. I don't know what do you think comparing a pic of a leucistic Texas rat snake of mine?

http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=319100,320768&key=2004

Terry Parks

Nice animal, I have some of that same line myself and they are one of the my favorite Sotuherns. As far as being a true leucistic like a tx. rat is concerned ,it is somewhat interesting. The word leucistic as you know is defined as a solid white snake with black eyes which these definitely are. As far as being leucistic and far as the leucistic trait being a simple recessive trait they are not. Mark produced them by color breeding them from a number of combination of the patternless gene and several others and then increasing the amount of white over a number of generations by selctive breeding as you probally know.

In any case they are indeed some really awesome animals that are a lot of fun to work with. This last year out of two completely white animals I got a clutch of 11 eggs. Two were patternless and a solid light tan, 3 were soilid white as yours is and the rest were the white with a tinge of very very light pink around the neck area. Kind of like opening christmas presents when you have a clutch hatch. You ought to see the results of an albino breed into this line, they are awesome also.

Someone ask thrugh an email why the price on them is so high. Simply said the price of those solid white ones are really high because of the work that goes into producing them and the rarity in the hobby at this time. As more are produced I would imagine the price will go down as it does for any other morph. But that will not be for a few years anyway.

Take Care and good luck with them this year.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

jwc