Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have information on the caramel albino? Are they just a refined Hypo? After all hypomelanism is the reduction of pigmintation(melanin) just like the caramel albino. Does anyone who has worked with these know the degree of variation, do they all have red pupils?
Thanks,
Dave

O.K. I found out they are a form of hypomelanism and then crossed with different hypos you can make Caramel glows, Lavender albinos, and Coral albinos! Looks like a winner to me even if there's a few kink tails!

Would you mind posting a link to where you found that info at? Im always trying to expand my mind... (you'd think that finals for this semester would have done it....)
Thanks!

~Johnny

your info is incorrect.

they are not hypos.

They do make caramel glows when crossed with orange ghost.

Lavender albinos are a different recessive trait.

and I have never heard of a coral albino ball??
boa yes ball no.

do you mean coral glow, which is still not a product of caramels.

TomChambers

Coral Glow not a product of Caramel albino? Well the Whitesmoke albino which produced the Coral Glow was a form of Caramel Albino with peppering. I believe that the Lavender Albino IS the only T plus albino and eveything else (all 10-20 shades of albino) except T- albinos are refined Hypomelanistics and future breedings will prove this!!!

Well, just wanted to supply some information.

First off, the Caramel Albino is indeed a true albino in that it does not produce melanin at all, unlike a "Ghost" or hypomelanistic animal which has only a reduced ability to produce melanin(aka black pigment).

Now, the reason that a Caramel and regular Albino appear different is in the Tyrinase aspect. A regular albino does not produce tyrinase (which I believe is a precursor for melanin) while a caramel does. Often you will see Caramels denoted as T+ Albinos, which is shorthand for the above.

Secondly, the Whitesmoke project is in my understanding not the same as a Caramel, as you can see just from looking at pics of the two. Also as far as I know, the genetics of the Whitesmoke haven't been completely figured out, with the babies not appearing the same as the original Whitesmoke, but I could be wrong, check N.E.R.D.'s website to be sure.

-Dan

You are way off the mark, the lavender albinos are in no way manner or form a Tyrosinase positive albino, they are T- just as the regular albinos are just a different form of T-. As for the Caramel albinos being a form of hypo, i saw the first caramel ever hatched and they are not a "refined" hypo but are a completely different mutation all together or a caramel glow would not be possible. You really should brush up on your genetics. And remember the first Caramel albino was hatched in 96 so there have been plenty of breedings to prove your Hypothesis incorrect. As for the whitesmoke it was a wild caught animal that is Co-Dominant and is wholly different than the aforementioned recessive traits. The Coral glow which is very similar to Will Sloug's Banana ball are so unique from the other morphs as to not even be considered in the conversation.

I agree with averyone who said like wise...And i beleive that the Banana clown is from Kevins whitesmoke line. Also the banana pastel..
KIM

Awesome snakes! Is that the "caramel albino" in the middle? I don't see how anyone would think that has no melanin in it! Melanin is dark pigmentation correct, which is black and browns!

...are two seperate lines produced from two seperately imported morphs.

The original WhiteSmoke was an imported male, while the original Banana was an imported female. NERD's Coral Glows were made using the WhiteSmoke male.

The two morphs DEFINITELY share some common characteristics. I'm sure I'm not the only person curious to see what a WhiteSmoke/Coral Glow X Banana breeding would produce. Hmmm....

Hope this helps.

BB
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"Have you hugged your drummer today?" --- Me

HHHMMMMMM Maybe a very light Hypo?????

Oh, the only reason why i said that is bc in Kevins new book it says the Coral glow is also known as the whitesmoke and then it said that designer morphs created with the coral glow consisted of the banana clown and the banana pastel..
Kim

I am SO glad that SOMEBODY put this thread on the right track!!

If anybody wants a full explanation of this trait and its inheritance, I suggest looking up VPI's website, and a few of the other really big, professional breeders' websites.

It's really amazing how many people are involved with breeding Ball Pythons and don't know squat about genetics!! What's worse is that those who are already misinformed then spread their "understanding" of the topic, and post their explanations on a website - and if it looks good, then obviously the information must be good too.

Biochemically speaking, an organism must be able to produce Tyrosinase in order to be able to produce melanin (pigment responsible for black and brown coloration), because Tyrosinase is a chemical that must be slightly modified in order to create melanin. Melanin cannot exist without Tyrosinase first.

The reason that Caramel Albinos have some brown to them has to do with their ability to produce Tyrosinase, and by bioprocesses we don't need to go into here, small amounts of that Tyrosinase are turned into melanin, but the animal is not able to make melanin in significant amounts on its own, as the animals that we consider to be normal can. The mutation affects the animal's ability to transform all of its Tyrosinase into melanin.

This is why the white-and-yellow albinos and lavender-and-yellow albinos are referred to as "T [minus] albino" (or lacking the ability to produce Tyrosinase), while the Caramels are called "T [plus] albino" (as they apparently can produce Tyrosinase, but still lack enough melanin that they are classified as albinos).

Thanks for reading my rantings.

~Rebecca
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1.1 Ball Pythons (1.0 '05 Ghost, 0.1 '03 Normal)
0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40 lb darling lap dogs)

For the information, I just jumped to conclusions so I would get answers out of you all. You have to admit some caramel albinos do look like orange hypos but with red pupils. I wonder if anyone has actually done the gene work needed to prove T- from Tplus albinos?
Happy Holidays
Dave

A few years ago I asked Dave Barker whether anyone had done a tyrosinase test on an albino ball python. He said that nobody had done such a test on any boid. Until someone does, there is no way to tell whether albino ball pythons are tyrosinase negative or not.

For what it's worth, there is a mutant in the lab mouse that is named pinkeyed dilute. It strikes me as similar to caramel albino. The research that has been done in the mouse indicates that the genetic defect is in a gene that makes an enzyme other than tyrosinase.

The lab mouse has many more than 100 mutants that affect pigmentation scattered among more than 50 loci. And the gene at only one locus seems to produce tyrosinase. So tyrosinase is no more than the tip of the iceberg. Ball python pigmentation is more complex than mouse pigmentation, because the mouse lacks xanthophores and guanophores.

By the way, there is a lot of garbling on the web on the tyrosinase test and tyrosinase positive albinos. Bechtel has the word either in his book, Reptile and Amphibian Variants: Colors, Patterns, and Scales or some of the papers in his bibliography.

Paul Hollander

I guess whomever named it first had the right to call it that. Seeing how your little mouse has only one chromatophore and reptiles have three I'm sure there are many more variations to make! Very interesting how only one had tyrosinase I guess all the others were forms of hypomelanism?

n/p

>Very interesting how only one had tyrosinase I guess all the others were forms of hypomelanism?

Oh, almost all mice have tyrosinase, just like all snakes do. There are a few lines of mice that have lost the entire tyrosinase-producing gene, but they are pretty rare. In albino mice, the tyrosinase is an abnormal form that doesn't catalyse the transformation of tyrosine into L-dopa. In himalayans and chinchillas, it's an abnormal form that functions, but not well. It works normally in pinkeyed dilutes, roans, leadens, microophthalmics, and almost all others. Some other enzyme is abnormal in those mutant mice.

I don't recall any mouse mutant named hypomelanistic. There are plenty of mutants that produce a color that is lighter than normal, of course. But the mutants are grouped by locus rather than any chance similarity of appearance. In other words, albino, chinchilla, and himalayan are in one group because they are alleles and produce abnormal tyrosinase. While pinkeyed dilute is not an allele of albino so is in a different group with its own mutant alleles. Roan is in a third group, and microophthamic is in still another group. For what it's worth, I think that grouping by locus is more logical than grouping by a chance similarity.

Sorry, no pictures available.

Paul Hollander

We do agree that hypos are a wide range of highly variable morphs which also block tyrosinase from gaining access into the melanophres just like albino T plus! Anyways if anyone else is interested check out VMS herp's educational section and read the definition of Amelanism and Hypomelanism.

Rebecca wrote:
"It's really amazing how many people are involved with breeding Ball Pythons and don't know squat about genetics!! What's worse is that those who are already misinformed then spread their "understanding" of the topic, and post their explanations on a website - and if it looks good, then obviously the information must be good too."

This applies directly to the VMS web site. I've only looked at a couple of pages so far. My opinion so far is that it is as good at genetics as a 10 pound rock is as a floatation device.

Paul Hollander

What didn't you understand, maybe I can walk you through it. Professional herpetoculture is very complicated but I think their Genetics 101-501, Chromatophores, and Mutation information is some of the best ever writing on snakes. Better then the aforementioned VPI website, that was so vague he doesn't even mention hypomelanism. Before you go throwing analogies read the rest of it and all of you might learn something! Welcome to the 21st century!

Okay, I looked at the VMS Genetics 101, 201, 301, and 501 pages. The 101 page is in the poor to fair range, and the rest go downhill from there. I was absolutely staggered to see that the sexlinked portion on the 501 page was right while the autosome definition was wrong. This opinion is derived from my experience in a university genetics course and five years working fulltime in the university genetics lab's ringneck dove colony. Most of the crosses we did there had mutants at three to six loci, though a few got up to eight loci.

I consider the 10 pound rock analogy accurate. You can swim (barely) with a 10 pound rock, but swimming is a lot easier if you never pick it up.

By the way, tyrosinase is made inside the melanophores; it does not "gain access into the melanophores". A few of the various mutants lumped into the "hypomelanistic" and "T-plus albino" categories may produce partly functional tyrosinase. Ultra in the corn snake seems to be one of these. But most of the mutants produce their own partly functional or nonfunctional enzymes. These enzymes do not substitute for tyrosinase; the normal counterparts are catalysts in other parts of the melanin biochemical assembly line.

Paul Hollander

Happy Holidays!!!!