Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey guys its me again. what is the growth rate for C.atrox from birth to adult.

thanks alot

ashley
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"I’m scared of those nasty big-eyed grey aliens, too. I think it’s that I don’t understand their motivations. I am confident of my ability to out-think, out-con, or if need be, tire-iron-upside-the-head demonic forces, ghosts and goblins, things that go bump in the night, etc. It’s the notion of something that doesn’t have any desire to talk to me except via anal probe that freaks me out"

It depends on how you feed them. Feed them small meals frequently, keep them up for the first winter, they will be 3ft in 18 months.
This generally holds true for normals and albinos. Patternless atrox tend not to grow as fast.
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Tim Cole
www.Designeratrox.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
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Conservation through Education

Are your patternless from unrelated parents or siblings?

MCH

All of them are related. I outcrossed patternless this year to an albino and will see if these grow faster.
I suspect the chromosome gene that expresses the patternless trait may have negative aspects also which prevents them from growing like weeds. Ironically, we accept the albinos as a weaker strain but they do grow like weeds. Kinda blows my theory doesn't it?
Any ideas out there?
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Tim Cole
www.Designeratrox.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<
Conservation through Education

Often, genes that seem to control just one thing actually have a role in a variety of aspects of an organism's makeup. It's completely possible that by isolating the genes that lead to a patternless atrox, you are also messing with genes that help control growth rates. This would be my hypothesis anyway, considering that you probably raise all these snakes in the same manner, maybe even feeding them slightly more than normal to get them to breeding size more quickly (sorry if that's an incorrect assumption, but it's a very common aspect of herp breeding). I would be curious to see how the ones you outcross do compared to the related ones. Do they hets grow slowly like the homozygous individuals? If not, that would further give weight to the idea that the genes overlap to a degree. Neat stuff.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

....OH, but the albinos..perhaps the genetics try to compensate for coloration that makes the snake stick out like a sore thumb, by speeding up the growth rate???

I would have guessed the same as you, but now I'm thinking that nature may try to give the albinos a chance at survival by speeding up the growth.

I don't mean to be derogatory, but thinking of genetics as having a will of its own is sort of anthropomorphizing. In the case of albinism, something has happened to stop the normal production of tyrosinase, the enzyme which allows for melanin depositing in the skin. This is caused by an accident, if you will, and the snake really doesn't have any built in mechanism for compensating for this accident. That's sort of along the same lines of...I think it was Larmacke's (?)idea of evolution...or evolution by necessitation; i.e., giraffes "need" long necks so they stretched up to the leaves and, over time, they developed long necks. This is obviously now known to be false. Evolution never has a purpose set in mind, just a natural method of tried and true adaptations that over time spread throughout a population. But I digress. When a mutation occurs, such as in coloration or patterning, it's still the basic animal as all the others of its species, just has a strange color. The only way it could experience differences in something like growth rates would be if the genes playing a part in coloring also affect the metabolic rate. A really good example of this, well...sort of good...is with a lion/tiger hybrid (I hate saying liger ever since I saw Napoleon Dynamite for the first time). These cats are HUGE at maturity, because evidently when the two species cross, something happens in the genes controlling for growth rate and nearly shuts them off. The result is a cat that's astoundingly huge at maturity. I've never heard of any mutation or hybrid though resulting in slowed growth though, but I'm sure it's possible.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

The size of lion/tiger offspring depends on which species makes up which sex and is due to genetic imprinting. Certain traits are more important to each species and sex, and therefore, females have different genes turned on/off than the males do.

So ligers are male lion and female tiger crosses.

Lion breeding is very competitive and it is in the males best interest to produce large young in order to ensure his genes are passed on. The females are interested in producing as many young as possible and are not worried about the size. Therefore, the males pass on genes with growth turned on, while the females growth genes are inactivated.

Tigers are solitary and do not have the same type of competitive breeding. Males have no need to increase the size of offspring, and females have no need to restrict these increases.

When you match the male lion (genes for growth) with the female tiger (no restriction) you get the very large liger.

Male tigers (normal growth genes) with female lions (restricted growth) produce the much smaller tigon.

Interestingly, this can also lead to problems in humans. When the nonimprinted (active) allele is inactivated by deletion or mutation, the imprinted (inactive) allele is unable to provide normal biologic activity. If the male copy of an allele on chromosome 15 is deleted, the child is born with Prader-Willi syndrome. If the female copy of the same allele is deleted, the child is born with Angelman syndrome.

Slowed growth in patternless atrox could be a result of some of the genes dictating the pattern, lying in close approximation to a gene for growth on the same chromosome. A deletion or mutation could inactivate that section of the chromosome. Maybe they are on different chromosomes and there is a recombination that disrupts both loci. I would think in situations like these, there would be other problems present as well though. I sure don't have the answer, but I don't think this is due to genetic imprinting.

Jason