morphs

Its hard to even know were to start with all the Honduran morphs surrounding us today. I will try and keep it as simple and helpful as possible. Homozygous, heterozygous, genotype, phenotype, ontogentic, dominant, co-dominant, recessive and simple recessive are some of the things I will try and cover here.

There seems to be three distinct color phases of Hondurans from the wild. There is the Tri-colored version of red to orange, black and cream white to yellow. There is the bi-colored black and red and of coarse the Tangerine that's usually tangerine, black and a off tangerine. We have began to see all three of these variations in the morphs as well.

The Anerythristic was the first real morph on the scene. Although its actually a Hypoerythristic (reduced red) we will call it Anerythristic until somebody decides to change it? I am sure we will see a true Anery and even a Axanthic some day. We haven't seen very many nice Anerys by themselves. I am sure we will start to see pinstriped and maybe vanishing patterned Anerys in the near future. I think Dave Doherty was the first to produce a Anery in captivity. It was like 1991 and it was produced from hets produced by him from a w/c Anery.

The first Hypos produced in captivity were in 1993 by Bill and Kathy Love. They bought a snake labeled Coral Snake $15 in a snake shop in Florida. It turned out to be het for Hypo and when they bred back an offspring female to the father, there were two hypos produced. Hypos have come a long way. Bruce Miller of Northern Calif and Terry Dunham were first to take the hypo to the extreme. They produced pinstriped ones and that let to the vanishing pattern ones. Now Mike Falcon of Florida has taken it even further with his Super Hypos. I own a Pair of these and would have to say that they are very different than the other hypos out there. I'm not totally sure if its the same genetics or not, but they are so awesome side by side there is no comparison. Only about five people have these and they are going to be a key ticket in future projects.

The Albinos (Amelanistics) are a long story. I can give you two articles in magazines if you would like to read the stories. Vivarium vol.7 #5 by Louis Porras and Reptiles Magazine September 2002 by Terry Dunham. Both are great articles.

There are four main color phases of the Amel. First, is the sometimes pretty drab Tri-colored Albino. When they are born they are nice, clean and bright but as they age they tip out and are just kind of yellow and white.

Second is the four colored Albino, I have a few of these and they are very nice. Usually bright red, yellow, orange and then tipping in the yellow is red or peach. Third is the bi-colored or high yellow. These are very attractive as adults. They start out as tr-colors but at about two years the inner band have bled through and creates a two colored albino. Mine are really bright red and yellow.

Third of coarse is the Tangerine Albino. There is a large range on these and the lower end ones are being called peach phase. This is a good name cause the are way above average but not quit a Tangerine. I have seen Tangerines that are very nice with thin inner bands and I have seen tangerines that are almost 50/50. When the inner bands are as wide and as bright as the back ground then you have a real winner.

We have come a long way since the early to mid 90s and we have been combining all the different morphs together to create new and exciting dbl-homozygous(showing two traits) animals. We have all seen the Ghosts and the Snows.

In order to get there, there has been alot of ground work laid down by such names as Terry Dunham, Dave Doherty, Steve Osborne, Gary Kessler, Bob Montoya, Norm Damn, Doug Beard, Byron Barnes, Tom Harbin, Mike Falcon, Marc Bailey, John Manser and a few others. I consider these guys pioneers in the herpetoculture end of it all. We are just starting to see the results of all the hard work. Dave Doherty, being the founder of the Anerythristic, was the first to produce a ghost (hypo anerythristic) in 1999.

By breeding a Hypo to a Anery you will produce a whole clutch of normal looking babies that are all dbl-hets (het. for hypo and het. for Anery). When two of the offspring are bred together you will produce 25% Hypos that are possible het. for Anery. 25% Anery that are possible het. for Hypo. 50% will be normal looking and will be 2/3 or 67% chance dbl-hets? Some of these are dbl-hets, single hets and some are het. for nothing, but they are all lumped together cause you can't tell? There is a 1 in 16 chance you will produce a Ghost. This doesn't mean that you need a clutch of sixteen (although the more eggs) the better the odds to produce a Ghost. You could do it with one egg? Every egg has the same chance percentage wise.

You will often see the phrase "this snakes phenotype is hypo and its genotype is anery" all this means is that it is a hypo that is het. for Anery.
Terry Dunham was the first to produce a Snow Honduran in 1999 and to date there is probably less than 20 of them.To produce a Snow you start with a Albino and a Anery just like the Ghost process.

The third dbl-homozygous (showing both traits) Honduran is the Hybino. We don't know for sure yet if one has been produced, but it probably has. Terry, myself and a few others have what may be a Hybino. The only problem is its an Amelanistic and its hard to tell if its just a good Tangerine Albino or indeed a Hybino? Time will tell and we should see a Hybino, for sure, in 2004 .

Terry has gone one step further to produce a definite Hybino by producing Hypos that are 100% het. for Albino. When these are bred together the Amels that are produced will be Hybinos, for sure. Its fun to see this unfolding year by year.

Triple hets:This is a cool combination of three simple recessive genes (Albino x Hypo x Anery) that will prove to be very valuable in the future. There are three ways to make a triple het. The first way (the way I do it) is to breed a Ghost to an Albino. A Snow to a Hypo will give you the same results and the third way (not yet done) would be to breed a Hybino to an Anery.

The math on this one is a little complicated but to break it down easy its like this. Triple hets bred together can produce at least 8 different phenotypes. Albinos, Hypos, Anerys, Ghosts, Snows, Hybino, wild types, and a 1 in 64 would be a triple homozygous? Now,all the offspring in the clutch would be possible het. for the others. I am growing up some young ones from a tripl-het x triple het breeding. It will be fun to see what they are by test breeding them in the future. It will probably be five years before we know for sure that we have a triple homozygous in our hands. When we think we have one, we will have to test breed it to all three morphs and if all three produce 100% phenotypes we will know for sure we have one?

There will no doubt be shortcuts to get the triple homo in the future but for now we must cross our fingers. We know it will look somewhat like a Snow. No matter what it will be a Amel that is also Hypo and Anery? It might look like a Pearl (my favorite name so far) but who ever produces the very first one will get to name it.

We just covered three simple recessive morphs. There are pattern and color morphs that we can combine along with the recessives to create new and exciting Striped Albinos etc........It will never end. Some say we are following in the footsteps of the Cornsnakes and that's just fine with me. I like Cornsnakes.

Norm Damn has been producing weird patterned Hondurans for some time now, I myself have tried combining them with the Hypo line but so far have been pretty unsuccessful. The problem with the Norm Damn line is that it isn't simple recessive like the Albinos, Hypos and Anerys. A friend of mine (name withheld for now) has proven his own line recessive, as of last year(03). Now its game on. Its a very nice clean line of aberrant animals that when combined will produce true dbl-hets. You will see in the next few years aberrant everything.

Probably the most exciting new thing on the honduran scene is the piebald or calico? I think if it proves out simple recessive it will be the next big thing. Keep your eyes open for the next couple years cause you will be seeing eye candy come out of the Honduran breeders.