Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Like the post I made on the Chinese beauty snakes, I'm trying to show how the babies start out dark and get lighter as they get older.

One of my clutches of Elaphe bimaculata was from a very light colored female we call the "blonde phase" female. She looks kinda hypo-like, but breedings have shown that it is just a color variation. However, her offspring are lighter brown than most others I've seen. This is our main project with bimacs right now..to breed the really light brown colors.

This is a newly hatched male from the August, 2004 clutch...

This is a photo I took today of another male from the same clutch at 3.5 months of age...

All the babies were of the same coloration at birth. Notice how the second one has changed coloration as it grew. And, although it is not terribly light colored, it does have reduced amts. of black, especially in the rear half of its body. This snake shows some color and pattern of both of its parents.

TC

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Ratsnake Haven: Calico and hypo Chinese beauty snakes, Mandarin ratsnakes, Chinese twin-spotted ratsnakes, South Korean Dione's ratsnake, Great Plains ratsnakes and corns

Thanks for posting the pics to illustrate what you were seeing. That's a big color/shade change in 3.5 months. The bimac in the first pic almost looks anerythristic and 3.5 months later it can look hypomelanistic. I like your use of the word "phase" when a snake has the phenotype, but not the actual gene. Four years ago I acquired a pair of Orange Morph Texas rat snakes as they were being called then. It really doesn't have a morph gene causing them to have a high orange ground color. They were produced by selective breeding. It is better to call them Orange Phase Texas rat snake since it doesn't mislead you into thinking you are getting a snake with a Orange Morph gene.

I'm not bored in the least with your great pics and information TC. Snakes are being given a lot of descriptive names. Some of the names refer to morph genes which can cause the price of the snake to be higher. Sometimes you buy a snake with a certain gene because you want that gene for a project. It is quite disappointing to raise up a hatchling to get the gene you think it has and then find out a couple years after that it doesn't have that gene. Some projects can take 10 years or more to develop. Oops, I'm on another subject. Sorry.

Terry Parks

Thanks, Terry. I agree, specialty names can cause confusion with whether or not a snake has particular genes. We've been working with the "blonde" bimac since about 1999 and only found out this summer that her color wasn't due to a recessive gene. I was hoping she was hypomelanistic. I never called her hypo though, and didn't want to use the term "morph" for the reason you stated. Would have been confusing. We just call her blonde because of her light tan coloring. We do know that her babies can be light colored too, even when the father is a dark brown.

Another factor you have to look at though is that the babies start out so bland, like taeniura and other ratsnake species. You don't know how good they will look in a few months. That's one reason I like to over-winter them, so i can see them all in the spring, before I decide which to sell or trade. Of course, bimaculata are inexpensive snakes and have small clutches, so it's not as difficult with them as it would be with a sp. like taeniura. I would love to get a mutation I could introduce to my colony to add some interest to this species. Love working with these guys.

Thanks for your comments,

TC

Like both of you, I have always been bothered by the casual use of the terms "morph" and "phase". Of course, you almost never hear the term "phase." Occasionally, I even ask show vendors to explain what they mean and guess what? They rarely know. I usually get some mumbling that ties color and morph but doesn't really say anything specific. I, too, would truly love to see more use of the term "Phase" when its appropriate. That said, if you aren't worried about breeding and just prefer the appearance, I guess it isn't a big deal.

I, too, would truly love to see more use of the term "Phase" when its appropriate. That said, if you aren't worried about breeding and just prefer the appearance, I guess it isn't a big deal.

I agree, Mark. "Phase" is an appropriate term when the snake stays the same, but the appearance is different in different phases, and can be reproduced. I'm not sure how "morph" is being used these days, but it seems it would be a more difficult term to use.

Often times I see morphs that are being called phases. The Miami phase corn means a certain color/pattern to most hobbyists, whereas to me there's a "morph" of the corn snake coming from se. FL. that is different in size, shape, behavior, etc, as well as color/pattern.

I think the term "morph" gets used a lot to mean mutations, such as amelanistic or hypo, etc, also, whereas, I would like to see the term used more to decribe morphological variations in a species. I can see where the term could confuse people in some instances, like Terry's TX ratsnake that he thought was a mutation.

The Brazos Island ratsnake comes to mind as a recent example. It has a desireable color, pattern, shape, and size, but is not a mutation, or is the form restricted to Brazos Island. It's just the best examples come from there. So, I would think of this form of guttata as a "morph". It's very different from an average Emory's ratsnake, for instance.

Sorry for being long winded. Hope this doesn't open a whole can of worms

TC

It seems a form of an animal that breeds true, such as the "blonde" bimac, is a morph, and not a phase, even though it's not a recessive gene producing the color form. If it were only blonde for part of its life, that would be a phase it was going through. Live and learn I guess

TC