Charcoal Terrazzo (no AKA))
Most Commonly Used Name: Charcoal Terrazzo
Mode of Genetic Inheritance: Recessive
Morph Type: Recessive Mutation Compound
Eye Color: Black pupil & gray iris
Combining the two recessive-to-wild-type mutations–first done here at South Mountain Reptiles–Terrazzo and Charcoal renders this stunningly pale ghost-colored mutation compound. The simple recessive mutation, Terrazzo was discovered by Craig Boyd from breeding two Rosy Rat Snakes together (an insular race of corns sometimes called Keys Corns) in the early 1990s. Terrazzos were originally marketed as Granite Corns, but in so much as the Terrazzo producers of that time did not frequent Internet chat forums, many of the mainstream corn snake keepers were unaware of this mutation. Despite warnings (along with pictures), members of one of the popular Online Corn Snake chat forums voted to re-assign the name Granite to Diffused Anery corns (former aka: Anery Bloodreds). It was awkward (and confusing) just a few months after this name re-assignment when Bill and Kathy Loves’ Book (Corn Snakes – The Comprehensive Owner’s Guide) was released, featuring a picture identifying a GRANITE CORN, but of course, that tan corn snake looked nothing like the NEW Granites (formerly Anery Bloodreds) that are black and gray. Jeff Galewood re-named the original Granite corns Terrazzos as he was–at that time–the primary producer of this beautiful mutation.
The simple recessive mutation, Charcoal was discovered in the 1980s and was originally called Pine Island Anery (for it’s geographic origin). Charcoals are one of the “Anery-type” mutants, but easily distinguished from variants of Anery-A. The eyes of Charcoals usually don’t show a contrast between pupil and retina, essentially appearing not to have a pupil while Anery-A types have a black pupil contrasted by a silver iris.
Combining these two mutations rendered a stunning gray and often striped mutation compound. We started this line by breeding a Pewter to a Rosy Rat (Key corn) that turned out to be het for Terrazzo (formerly Granite). Since we have not yet been able to distinguish between Pewter Terrazzos and Charcoal Terrazzos, we’re defaulting to calling all of them Charcoal Terrazzos.
I call Terrazzos second “striped-type allele” because it IS the second one if you don’t count the striped version of Motley (since it is on the same locus with Motley). Several breeders (myself included) have performed breeding trials to verify that Terrazzos are not allelic to other gene mutations. So far, evidence points to Terrazzos being a unique single recessive mutation. I bred a classic Striped Corn mutant to a Key Corn Het for Terrazzo and yielded no mutant corns out of 21 fertile embryos. We all agree that more trials are necessary to validate unique allele status for this beautiful corn. Therefore, breeding a Terrazzo to a Striped Corn should render no striped phenotypes.
Important Note:
These images are not renderings of the actual animals being offered, (except for uniquely offered snakes found in the SURPLUS section of this web site). We do not provide pictures of individual hatchling snakes for sale, nor do we recommend that you ever choose a new pet based on an image of its neonatal form. Corns change so dramatically from hatchling to adult, they will NEVER have the same colors or contrasts throughout maturity.While most of the snakes we produce will mature to resemble the featured adult image(s) on our web site, unlike manufactured products that are respectively clones of each other, the nature of polygenic variation results in each animal being similar but not identical to others of its morph. The snake we select for you may not mature to be identical to the pictured examples, but will be chosen based on our experience of observing which neonates will mature to properly represent their respective morph. We take this responsibility very seriously, and therefore publish the guarantee that we will exchange your SMR snake if it does not mature to be like our advertised examples.
