Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I went to our local herp show over the weekend; there was a dealer there with several black rat morphs; rusty, brindle, albino, white-sided, and leucistic...when I looked closely at the leucistic, I saw that two of the four had moderate bug eyes, and the other two were normal...I thought the bug-eye gene was restricted to leucistic texas rats? Do you think these were actually obsoleta, or were they more likely texas? Hmmmm....Thanks for any info or input...

SR

I just read the thread on rusty black rat snakes further down...since this dealer was not a well known breeder (he primarily sells frozen rats and mice and just brings a few snakes to the show) I bet the snakes I saw were Texas/Black rat crosses, or at the very least had some Texas genes in them...

SR

These animals propabely were Texas Ratsnakes or Texas x Black crossbreeds. I've never heard of any leucistic Black Ratsnakes having bug eyes, but with all this inbreeding going on it should be just a matter of time.

A while ago I had this discussion going on with Dwight Good. He thinks all leucistic Black ratsnakes are actually Texas x Black crossbreeds. I don't know if this is true at all, but it could explain why this bug eye syndrome pops up in animals that supposedly are Black Ratsnakes.

Thanks Herman...according to the rusty ratsnake thread below it sounds like only 2 breeders have genetically pure leucistic black rat lines...since the animals at the show were clearly labeled "Leucistic Black Rats" and (at least to me) they looked identical to photos I've seen of both leucistic black rats and leucistic Texas rats, I can foresee real problems trying to establish and maintain a pure strain of these...

SR

This is an old debate....Some say pure other say crossbreed I say it's best to do what your doing RESEACH before jumping into this gene pool...lol

np

You lucky dog! Wish I would have been walking by his table! I want some babies in a couple years!

Ron

your good for apair :e

All you have to do is cross the "bug-eyes" to a normal phase black ratsnake, and looking at the offspring, you will be able to see what the leucistic was.

Dewey

np