Snake of the Day 08-04-13

The Snake-of-the-Day headliner of this web site features photographs that we believe will interest our web site visitors.  Each daily photograph will be posted at 11:00 am. central (GMT – 5) and replaced in 24 hours. Feel free to make suggestions regarding what snake photographs you would like to see in this daily feature.   The animals pictured here are not for sale, unless otherwise noted, but you can find available surplus snakes for sale on the Surplus Page of this web site.  We appreciate your patronage and welcome any suggestions you may have.

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Several years ago, I bred a Pewter corn to a Rosy Rat Snake (aka: Key Corn) who later demonstrated that she has one copy of the Terrazzo gene mutation (ergo: unbeknownst to me at the time, she was Het Terrazzo).  The F1s of that pairing gave rise to the first Charcoal Terrazzos, but in an F2 generational production, one corn that was Bloodred-looking (with no obvious color phenotype) had trace amounts of random lateral depigmentation, rendering a ?pseudo?-Pied-sided look.  I raised that corn and bred him to an F1 this year and at least one of their progeny is puzzling.  As you can see from the corn pictured above (pale head color), it doesn’t display any Charcoal colors that it would have inherited from that gene mutation, but is has the eyes of most Charcoals (eye comparison between sibs in right-hand picture).  It doesn’t demonstrate any other markers for being a paradox (other than perhaps showing eyes exactly like Charcoal mutants?), but maybe via something like gene leakage, its eyes are the result of part of the Charcoal gene mutation — but without expression of the body colors of a Charcoal mutant?  Anyone with ideas are encouraged to share them.  Naturally, there isn’t much evidence here to present, but that’s the geneology of this brood and of its ancestors – in the few generations I’ve been working with them.  BTW, most of my Key Corn stock (including these) are from Boyd Line Key Big Pine wild stock (until I infused the Pewter mutation into the family tree).  Hence, the only hobby genes in these snakes would have come from my Pewter, which never produced any mutants other than Charcoal and “Bloodred/Diffused”.  OR is another gene mutation demonstrated in this oddball?