Reptile & Amphibian Forums

so i keep seeing different animals being described as 66% hets. so what the hell is a het? and what are all these different types of red tails? anery? hypo? please help me.

HET is short for Heterozygous. In plain English it simply means that the animal carries (or SHOULD carry) a specific gene. For instance, a Ball Python that is HET for Piebaldism would appear to be normal but in it's DNA it carries the potential to spit out Piebald babies depending on the makeup of the mate.

Others can explain to you better exactly how it works or how the makeup gets to be a certain percentage but that is the basic explanation of it.

While this isn't an exact example, think of it this way:

Male A carries the gene diamond patterns and Female A carries the gene for diamond patterns. If you mated them and the diamond pattern was of a certain genetic type you would get babies that exibited the diamond pattern and some that looked normal but carried the genes for Diamond. These would be "Het for Diamond" when they are sold.

Now mating Female A with a normal male would give you all normals (if memory serves me) but the offspring might be het for diamond but of a lower percentage.

Again, this isn't exact on how it works but someone who does a lot of breeding or isn't so far removed from biology class can clean up my muddy explanation

Het is short for heterozygous which is a term for recessive traits such as albinos. In recessive traits both parents must carry the gene for the trait to be visible. A het animal looks normal but carries a gene for that trait, When an albino is bred to a normal(in Ball pythons for example) the babies look normal but are 100% het for albino. If you breed that het to another 100% het their babies would only be 66% het meaning the possibility of them carrying the albino gene is 66%.

Hope this helps