Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have seen multiple people post pics of animals that have the genetics for Hybino but are labeled as possible or unproven. All of the pics I have seen are very similar to each other and different from albinos. So what is the question? I am asking because I may produce some and what to label them correctly. I understand not wanting to misrepresent your animals but they seem to be different looking enough to warrant it. Terry and anybody else do you have pics of yearling or older possible hybinos?? Hopefully Shannon chimes in to.
Thanks Jason

Oh, what a fun topic - "Hybino"
In theory what you need are 2 mutations to morph and create a new double Homozygous as seen with Ghost and Snow.

Albino – having absent or deficient melanin, we label or refer to it as "amelanistic" Genetically it is Tyrosinase-negative.
Hypomelanistic - having less black and/or brown color than a wild-type.

Based on these definitions how much of a difference would or is visible, if they did morph?
I have asked before when has this Double mutation ever taken place? And in what species? Visually how different were they? Still waiting for those answers and to learn more about this?
Genetically is seems that it should or has happened. If not why has it been so difficult to achieve?
I want to believe but am still not convinced that "Hybino" is an accurate term.

On another issue of trying to understand what is or makes an " Extreme " look at the following definitions -
Tyrosinase - an enzyme required for synthesizing melanin.
Tyrosinase-negative - an albino whose cells lack tyrosinase, producing a white and yellow/orange animal with pink eyes. A separate albino mutation from tyrosinase-positive.
Tyrosinase-positive - an albino not able to synthesize melanin, but capable of synthesizing tyrosinase, which results in lavender-brown or a greenish tint to it skin color. Also referred to as T+

Tyrosinase-positive - This is what I feel that the "Extremes" could or should be called.

I know there is much to be proven and tested and more to learn but still enjoy working with these animals for what they are. Learning from others and sharing what we do know leads to a greater interest.

I thought I knew the defs of all that before but now I do for sure. Thanks very good post!
The point I am trying to make is I have seen what people think are Hybinos but there are questions I guess. What I don't know and I hope Terry or some of you others might know is what are the breedings like. Are all the babies in the breddings the same do they follow other double morphs like snow and ghost in ratios?? Do you get what you would expect in these different looking animals??? I think you know what I am trying to say here. At this point enough animals have been breed to determine something.
Thanks Jason

Hi,
Actually, I disagree.I dont think "enough" animals have bred to determine something,especially with the hybino double morph.So far there have been dh x dh breedings,but the forsure way to get a hybino is by breeding a hypo het-albino x hypo het-albino,which has not even been done yet,but should be this year by a couple people,the offspring from those breedings will produce the first "known" hybinos,then it will be great to compare them to the "possible" hybinos that actually alive right now,to see if there is a major difference in color or not.So untill those hypo het-albino breedings take place,no one is sure right now what its going to look like-(although,mnay people have their own idea of what it will look like,and I've talked to people who say they have 1 forsure,but untill they breed it they wont know)anyways,so hopefully this year the "HYBINO" double morph can finally answer alot of questions just like the one that started this post,I've seen lots of them,and it is an interesting thing to watch and see how it will turn out,I doubt it will be much nicer than a really nice looking tangerine albino,except for more of an orange look to it.
Jeff Teel

Thanks Jeph
I thought that breeding was done last year by some. I guess not. I think the way the morph is being handled is great compared to things like Ball Pythons but it is still a little frustrating to me. I guess we will have to wait for this years breedings. Post some pics at the top of your animals in a new thread since this one got buried PLEASE. New morph or not I still like seeing them.
Thanks Jason

hi jeff,

you said it well and in a lot fewer words than i took. well done.

terry

...what are the breedings like. Are all the babies in the breddings the same do they follow other double morphs like snow and ghost in ratios?? Do you get what you would expect in these different looking animals??? I think you know what I am trying to say here. At this point enough animals have been breed to determine something.
>>Thanks Jason

JASON,

See my other posts in this thread. Yes, production would be the same as for other double morphs, snows or ghosts. (see my genetics page, link is below; hybino breedings would be same as snow examples for double hets)

Unfortunately, though we WISH enough had been bred to determine something, they remain AT THIS TIME visually indistinguishable from the other albinos produced from the pairing.

REMEMBER TOO when you're talking about them all looking alike, most people think hybinos are going to look a lot like TANGERINE albinos. That's not necessarily so. A hybino could just as easily look like a TRICOLOR albino. The only reasons people associate the tangerine albinos with hybinos are that:

a) (fact) the hypos we had to work with when the first hypo x albino crosses were made were tangerines, so they introduced a substantial tangerine influence into the albinos (which incidentally originated from tricolor lines and were still all tricolors at the time they were crossed to hypos) and thus a tangerine influence was bred by necessity into the hybino breeding efforts

and

b) (opinion) people found the tangerine albinos particularly attractive (and different from what they'd seen to that time, the tricolor albinos) so people tended to use more of the tangerine double hets for pursuing hybinos, knowing they'd get more tangerine albino babies that were more marketable/prettier, so that further skewed the hybino pursuits to tangerines.

But hybinos could just as easily be tricolors.

peace
terry
albino tricolors genetics page

Genetically is seems that (the hybino) should or has happened. If not why has it been so difficult to achieve? I want to believe but am still not convinced that "Hybino" is an accurate term.

HI ADAM,

See my other (long post) in this thread, i think it'll answer most of your questions--or i hope so, at least. Yes, i agree it very probably has happened. Statistically it very likely has.

I don't thin there was anything particularly difficult about it--it's as simple as any of the other double morphs, EXCEPT that we don't yet know how to visually identify them. But the genetics of it is the same as producing snows, for ex. And the fact that it CAN be done (that both gene pairs can exist on the same animal) is proven by the fact that i've produced hypos and albinos out of double hets, for ex., so the parents have to be harboring the genes for the two traits on different gene pairs.

As for "hybino" being an accurate term, not sure what you mean. The term "hybino" was proposed by St Pete, FL herper Doug Beckwith when i first did the albino x hypo cross in pursuit of that double-morph. It's just a label. It seemed to be an accurate term that people would also understand--it designates animals that are hypo and albino. Can you elaborate on your reservations about the term? Certainly "hypo and albino" would be more descrptive or thorough, but so would "amelanistic and anerythristic" but "snow" is a lot easier-- and note "snow" doesn't incorporate the two separate morphs it displays at all, the way "hybino" does for what it represents, So i'd argue hybino is better than snow, and snow seems pretty widely accepted--even though snows are NOT snow white, so snow is not even a real good descriptive term. (and to complicate things, "anerythristics" aren't! they're clearly hypoerythristic, maintaining a slight but observable degree of the effects of erythrins, so the more accurate term would have the "hypo" (reduced) prefix instead of the "an" (lacking or absent) prefix.)

Naming's a [bleep]!

Tyrosinase-positive - an albino not able to synthesize melanin, but capable of synthesizing tyrosinase, which results in lavender-brown or a greenish tint to it skin color. Also referred to as T-positive

Tyrosinase-positive - This is what I feel that the "Extremes" could or should be called.

That's an interesting explanation. If your definition is a widely-accepted and accurate one (not questioning you, merely expressing my own ignorance) then it's a well thought out argument. The issue(s) remaining would be how a tyrosinase-positive albino gene popped out of a LONG line of traditional hypos. Another question will be if it can be isolated from the hypos from which it appeared. If the parents were hypos (or hypos & hets) with ability to produce hypos, then are the extremes animals that are BOTH traditional hypo AND t-positive albinos? If so, what will an animal look like that is "JUST" t-pos albino?

Is the coloration in the originallyh black rings on "extreme" hypos comparable to the appearance of formerly black areas on other t-pos albinos? (cal kings are an example, right? or is it different? and in the case of any of the "t-positive albinos", do we know they're t-positives from skin tissue analysis? Or are they being designated that--in at least some cases--based on appearance and people's conclusion that, well, then, "that must be what's going on"? Both appear to involve a lightening of formerly black areas: how do we distinguish t-pos albino from simply a different hypomelanistic gene that reduces the mealanin to a diff degree than on the nominative hypo, the one that showed up first and that we associate with hypomelanism?

Gonna take some noodling still--and considerable more test breeding--to figure out all that.

peace
terry

>>Tyrosinase-positive - an albino not able to synthesize melanin, but capable of synthesizing tyrosinase, which results in lavender-brown or a greenish tint to it skin color. Also referred to as T-positive

>>Tyrosinase-positive - This is what I feel that the "Extremes" could or should be called.

>That's an interesting explanation. If your definition is a widely-accepted and accurate one (not questioning you, merely expressing my own ignorance) then it's a well thought out argument.

IMHO, while those definitions may be widely accepted among herpers, they are not well though out.

First, when Bern Bechtel started using "tyrosinase positive" albino, he used it as a unique name for a particular mutant gene in the black rat snake. That is considerably different from using is as a category including a variety of mutant genes.

If a snake is not normally colored, I would like to know why. Tyrosinase negative isn't too bad, because it tells me that there is a malfunctioning tyrosinase enzyme. Tyrosinase positive means an unknown something other than the tyrosinase enzyme is malfunctioning. And it is very annoying to mate Joe's "tyrosinase positive" snake to Bill's "tyrosinase positive" snake and get a litter of normal babies. There are so many things other than tyrosinase that might be malfunctioning that lumping them all together under "tyrosinase positive" is highly simplistic.

Another problem. "Tyrosinase negative" implies to me a lack of tyrosinase enzyme. And in the lab mouse, there are over a dozen mutant alleles of the albino mutant, which is the mouse's tyrosinase negative mutant gene. Some of those are caused by deletions of the entire gene from the chromosome. The albino mutant produces a nonfunctional tyrosinase enzyme. Other alleles produce partially functional tyrosinase, which produce various shades of brown which are all lighter than normal but not pure white with pink eyes.

And testing is essential to a tyrosinase positive vs tyrosinase negative dichotomy, even if the dichotomy was well thought out. Has there been such testing in the Honduran milk snake?

Paul Hollander

Woof!! That made my head hurt. Nice post though. I sometimes forget to queastion what some people write when it sounds well thought out and I don't know what they are talking about. I understand the basic mutations very well but I have not looked into the T T- thing at all. Thanks for pointing out the problems there.
Later Jason

I have seen multiple people post pics of animals that have the genetics for Hybino but are labeled as possible or unproven.

What do you mean by "have the genetics for" hybino?

If you mean the POTENTIAL of having those genes, then they're labeled as possible or unproven because that's an accurate expression of the facts. It would be dishonest--optimistic, perhaps, and a tool for selling them, but dishonest nontheless--to call them otherwise.

If you mean they HAVE the genes that make an animal a hybino--TWO hypo genes and TWO albino genes--then the posts were probably misleading: To the best of my knowledge, no one has produced an animal yet that BECAUSE OF ITS PARENTAGE HAS TO BE THAT. The ones produced so far come out of parents with that capability--or potential--but until we know how to distinguish them visually (as you suggest; see further observations below) there's no way to say, "that's one" and "that's not."

This year i'll be breeding from hypo het/albino x hypo het/albino. Both parents are hypos so all babies will be hypos. Both parents are het albino so 1/4 of babies will be albinos. And because all the babies are hypos, those albinos will be albino AND hypo. And that's what makes a DEFINITE hybino. And they'll be visually identifiable-- all the albinos will BE hybinos. So there will be no need to say possible or unproven.

All of the pics I have seen are very similar to each other and different from albinos.

HOW do they "look different"? I've been producing potential or POSSIBLE hybinos for at least 3 years now and I've seen dozens of those "possible or unproven" specimens and they sure don't all look different to me. So you're gonna have to post back and be more specific--how, exactly, do all the albinos in those pix look different from other tangerine albinos that have no genetic chance of being hypos and thus hybinos? Maybe you've spotted something we haven't, or maybe you haven't seen a lot of tangerine albinos.

Now, about "UNPROVEN":

All those albino babies from prior breedings people have done -- double het for hybino x double het for hybino, for example, which was the earliest pairing with the potential to produce hybinos, or the more recent breeding i've done the past two years, albino het/hypo x double het, produce those babies i referred to that might or might not be hybinos. Some probably are, statistically. Most of them are not.

But you CAN PROVE one to be a hybino: Breed one of those albinos that MIGHT be a hypo X a hypo, and if you get ENOUGH babies, ALL of which are hypos, it could be argued that the parent is, then, a PROVEN hybino.

The problem is, HOW MANY babies do you have to get, ALL of which are hypos, before you can draw that conclusion? Most of us have had clutches hatch that were supposed to be half male and half female, but maybe all six were males. That wouldn't prove the parents were animals that could only produce males (I know, that's nonsense, but remember that if the adult we're testing is HET hypo instead of HYPO then when bred x a hypo (as proposed for this test) HALF the babies would be hypos, instead of all of them--the same 50-50 ratio we should see with genders. So the "how many babies have to be hypos" rhetorical question does relate to our experiences with getting clutches of babies that don't conform in gender to what will happen in a larger sample, so the analogy is, i think, a fair one.

So--if I produce ten babies from such a test, and they're all hypos, does that PROVE the adult is a hypo (and hybino, because it's albino)? No, but statistically it comes very close, just as the odds of getting 10 babies -- all of them male -- is statistically rare, but possible. So, 20 babies? still doesnt' prove it. But at some point, people will generally agree, "ok, with that many babies, and they're all hypos, I'm satisfied it IS a hypo (and thus hybino) parent. So that's why we say "unproven" and that's how one might be "proven" someday. Obviously it'll be far easier to produce babies that HAVE to be hybinos, from the parentage.

So the only way anyone should sell something as a hybino is either:
a) it's produced from parents who can ONLY produce identifiable hybinos;
b) the results of the testing are cited and the buyer is satisfied by them;
or, of course,
c) if we do eventually spot a visual difference eventually and learn how to designate hybinos on sight.

SEEING a number of animals we KNOW are hybinos will help: So if I produce definite hybinos this year and they vary in appearance the way POSSIBLE hybinos vary, then we'll have to conclude there's no visual way to identify them. IF in fact they all show some characteristic we didn't notice before, but that's seen only on SOME of the POSSIBLE hybinos produced in the past, then we can TEST breed THOSE possibles that showed that characteristic, and if THEY all PROVE to be hybinos, maybe we'll ahve estalbished a way to "know by looking".

Just fyi, the first of those possible hybinos that i test bred (because it had the cleanest, boldest colors--a description that could fit hypos, right?) was bred x several hypo females. The first 3 or 4 or 5 babies WERE hypos, I forget the edetails, i was getting excited, but it all became moot when finally a non-hypo hatched. That single animal was all it took to DIS-prove the animal was hybino. It only takes one to prove an animal's NOT homozygous, but it takes a very, very large number to prove it IS, by test breeding. That beautiful tangerine albino het/hypo is now the patriarch of my hybino project, ahving replaced the original double het males. But he's not a hybino. (rats!)

This year I hpe to test breed another male. It's tangerine albino. It's POSSIBLE hypo. And it's very pale. I'll try to post a pic later. ANyway, maybe THAT-- the paleness--is the visual clue, rather than brightness. I've got a hypo female or two set aside to breed him to, and of course will post the resutls. I've held back a pair of similar "pale" tangerine albinos from 04, just in case. But that may prove to be no more an indicator than the cleanness-brightness theory proposed.

I am asking because I may produce some and what to label them correctly. I understand not wanting to misrepresent your animals but they seem to be different looking enough to warrant it.

What are you breeding that "may" produce some? What are the genetics of the parents? You want to be real sure you are 100% sure when you sell something--and i realize that's why you've asked this question here.

Terry and anybody else do you have pics of yearling or older possible hybinos?? Hopefully Shannon chimes in to.

As I said, I'll try to post a pic or two.

peace,
terry

Terry I have your animals of course. I actually have double hets and the chance of produceing any are so slim that I would keep any/all that I do produce. But I was asking more to find out what is going on in the "test breeding" area.
The animals I was refering to are the pale albinos that are simular to the "peach" or "pastel" phases that some are marketing. It seems to me that all the recent pics of the hopeful hybino owners have this look. I have not been paying attention to this forum for awhile and thought I would raise some queastions that I was to lazy to go serch for answers that might not be there. LOL Sorry!! Also any new info was a target as well. I swear I am not that lazy.LOL As far as the pics go I was not sure if something happened and I missed it. I don't know how maybe it was the two hurricanes that ripped my roof off or something but I kinda got out of touch for a little while and when I came back to the forums much colder and in Chicago instead of Florida I kept seeing alot of these pics labled Poss Hybino. Maybe alot is a overstatement but I was still curious.
And what took you so long to reply?? You on vacation or something?? Just kidding I know your where away. Have you caught your first Pyro yet??
Later Jason