Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am new to snakes as some of you may have read in previous posts here.

My question centers around the word HET. I here of this kind of corn snake, that kind of corn snake. They are ALL beautiful and now I want more. But what does the term "het" refer too??

Thank you
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Mike
0.0.1 Green Iguana
0.0.1 Pac Man Frog
1.1.0 Albino African Clawed Frog
1.0.0 Corn Snake
1.0.0 BIG Golden Retriever 105 lbs

Het means the snake contains a gene for a morph it doesn't physically display. This is usefull for breeding because if you get two snakes that are het for something and you breed them, some of their babies will physically display the trait the parents were het for.
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0.1 Bearded dragon
0.1 mexican Black kingsnake
1.1 Leopard Gecko's
0.0.1 Tokay Gecko
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink
0.0.1 Reverse Okeetee Corn
0.1 Anerythristic Corn
0.0.1 Red Tegu
0.1 Bullmastiff
4.1 Cats

To simplify it even more, Suppose you and you wife/husband were both blonde. But you both had a parent with black hair... you have blonde hair but your mother had blonde hair so you are carrying the het (heterozygous) gene for black hair. So if you and your wife who are both blonde but have a gene for black hair had a baby, it would have black hair!
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0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1.0 Redtail "Kilo"
1.0 Ball Python "Road Hog"

That's not technically correct. What about corns that are homozygous lavender and anery---and they look lavender? Is that snake heterozygous for anery instead of homozygous?

The term heterozygous (het) means having different alleles at one or more corresponding chromosomal loci.

So you ask, what's a locus?

Locus- The position that a given gene occupies on a chromosome.

The snake wouldnt be homozygous and het at the same time. If its homo and bred to another homo snake, all babies would be homo. If its het and was bred to a homo then half would be (statistically) homo. The other half would be hets.
For the original poster, try not to over think this. A het simply carries the gene for a particular trait, but looks normal. There are snakes that are morphs that are het for other things but just get the basics first. Hope that helped and didnt make things worse.

p

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Occupants not paying rent:
1.1.5 balls
2.1.8 corns(candy cane, creamsicle, ghost, 4 normal,
4 anery )
1 pueblan milk
1 everglades rat
1 cal. king
1 gray band king
1 w. hognose
1 bearded dragon
1 fish
1 mouse
3.3 cats

But the point is the snake carrying one copy of a gene doesn't always look normal, which is why the definition is wrong.

Bloodreds are a good example. Het bloodred snakes do not always appear 'normal'.

Its not necessarily wrong, its just a confusing subject to grasp at times. I was just trying to explain it using basic examples. I did mention that het snakes dont always appear normal, I was just trying not to confuse the original poster with all the other stuff that can make your head spin, like triple and quadruple hets.

ep
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Occupants not paying rent:
1.1.5 balls
2.1.8 corns(candy cane, creamsicle, ghost, 4 normal,
4 anery )
1 pueblan milk
1 everglades rat
1 cal. king
1 gray band king
1 w. hognose
1 bearded dragon
1 fish
1 mouse
3.3 cats

Thanks everyone,
I appreciate your responses and I actually understand them...lol.

I believe that I have a normal corn from looking at thousands of pictures. You may remember that I recently just "inhereted" this guy. I love him (and think that he's a male). We, my girlfriend and I, are in the process of moving south about 3 hours so all I have here is the TV, iguana, snake and an air matress. I will be down there after Friday. When I originally told her about the snake she said UUUGGGGHHHHH". Well, the next time she came up I made her hold him and she absolutely fell in love with him....thats cool.

Anyway, thanks for the responses.

One more question?? You wouldn't know if you had a "het" unless you bred it or knew its familiy tree.....right??

Thank you
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Mike
0.0.1 Green Iguana
0.0.1 Pac Man Frog
1.1.0 Albino African Clawed Frog
1.0.0 Corn Snake
1.0.0 BIG Golden Retriever 105 lbs

that's exactly correct. if you don't know it's family tree you would have to "test" it which means breed it to a snake that would make noticably different offspring if bred to what you think your snake was het for. Basically since you don't know you would breed him to several different morphs and then see what you get if anything.
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0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1.0 Redtail "Kilo"
1.0 Ball Python "Road Hog"

>You wouldn't know if you had a "het" unless you bred it or knew its familiy tree.....right??

Usually right, sometimes wrong.

First, joejr14's definition of "heterozygous" was right on target. Most of the other posters were wrong.

Most of the mutant genes in corn snakes are recessive to their respective normal alleles. Animals that are heterozygous for a recessive mutant gene look normal, and you wouldn't know if you had a "het" unless you bred it or knew its family tree.

In many species, there are mutant genes that are either dominant or codominant to the normal gene or another mutant gene. In corn snakes, the motley mutant gene is recessive to the normal allele and dominant to the striped mutant allele. While the striped mutant allele is recessive to both the normal allele and the motley mutant allele. (Alleles are different forms of the same gene.) A snake that has a motley mutant gene paired with a striped mutant gene is heterozygous motley//striped and is usually somewhere within the variation among motley snakes.

An animal that is heterozygous for a dominant mutant gene does not look normal, but like an animal that is heterozygous for a recessive mutant, you wouldn't know if you had a "het" unless you bred it or knew its familiy tree. If you look at some park pigeons and see a solid black pigeon, it is either homozygous or heterozygous for a mutant gene named "spread". Only a breeding test would tell which.

An animal that is heterozygous for a codominant mutant gene does not look normal, but it also does not look like an animal that is homozygous for the mutant. You can do a simple test or just look at the heterozygous animal and tell that it is the heterozygous form. Humans who have AB blood type are heterozygous. In the reticulated python, tiger is the heterozygous form, and super tiger is the homozygous mutant form.

By the way, an animal can be heterozygous for one mutant gene and homozygous for a different mutant gene. A homozygous amelanistic corn snake could also be heterozygous for the anerythristic mutant gene, because the two mutant genes reside at different locations in the genome.

Hope this helps.

Paul Hollander

A snake that looks normal could be heterozygous for one or more recessive mutant genes. It would not be heterozygous for any dominant or codominant mutant genes.

Paul Hollander