Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How can you tell if a snake is a het? Please answer ASAP
Thank you,
Snake_gal

If the snake is heterozygous for a trait where both alleles produce a product then the heterozyogte will be intermediate between the two homozygotes. So if there was a trait that made snakes solid red and another allele at the same locus that made the snakes solid white, theoretically the heterozygote would be pink. So in this case (an incompletely dominant allele) you could recognize a het.

However, if one of the alleles is recessive to the other, such as occurs in amelanistic snakes, then the het would look like the homozygous normal snake and would be indistinguishable. So homozygous normal snakes would look normal, hets would look the same. Homozygous recessive individuals would be amelanistic.

So, in other words, the appearance of the heterozygotes depends on the nature of the inheritance pattern of the allele.
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Chris Harrison

look at the parents, or the offspring it produces. Short of taking it to a genetics lab, thats it.
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-Chris

0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat
1.0 Black Rat
0.1 Vietnamese Blue Beauty
1.0 Green Tree Python
0.1 Texas Bairds Rat

The educated are the few. The uneducated are the masses.

North American Rat / Corn Snake Care Sheet

Know the parents is the simple answer. Trust the seller of the snake you are buying to tell you the truth is the tougher answer. Unless you know for sure what the parents were, the only things that will tell you are an honest seller, and eventually what kinds of offspring the snake produces. Perhaps if you give us specifics regarding your situation somebody could be of more help. Duffy