>>Do you think that the pink color is acutally pigment or blood in the capillary beds of the skin showing through? If it is pigment would that suggest the anery parent may be a hypoerythristic instead?
Vinny,
Yeah, it's pigment and we concluded some time ago on this basis and others (you can see some pale yellow/orange/violet tint in most "anerys"
that what we call "anerythristic" hondos are really hypoerythristic. A number of us tried using that term so the nomenclature could adapt to reality. History shows the effort failed!
FROM "Banded Beauties, Honduran Milksnake Mutations," Reptiles Magazine, Sept 2002, by Terry Dunham:
"NOTE: Louis Porras rightly points out that these snakes hsould be called 'hypoerythristic' because the red is reduced, not absent. A true anerythristic would be white and black. Most anerythristic Hondurans have a faint, but clearly visible, violet, pink, yellow or orange hue where the red or orange rings would be on a wild type honduran. It's unlikely that Porras' precision will displace a decade of common usage, but for the sake of accuracy i'll use that term for the balance of this article. After all, a true, stark black and white anerythristic could be the next morph in the Honduran's future."
the heading on that section of the article even read:
"Hypoerythristics
(anerythristics)"
by the way, i obtained this year what's presumably only the third wild-caught hypoerythristic honduran to enter the U.S. The first died in Seattle in the early 1980s before breeding (actually, it was apparently constricted by cage mates who detected the scent of rodents on it after it was fed and returned to a cage with other hondos). The second was acquired by David Doherty in 1988 and is the maternal link to all today's "anerys"--David first bred his in 1989 and those hets produced the first captive born hypoerythristic in 1991. The one i just got is a female that should breed next year, providing a new lineage for the color variety.
peace
terry
