Head shot of a MicroScale Butter corn snake, demonstrating only part of the abnormal scalation that is often rendered by this mutated gene. Not only are virtually all scales smaller than those on their scaled counterparts, but also malformed–relative to the shapes of normal corn snake scales. Likewise, not only are different body zones dominated by particular atypically shaped scales, but there are also random anomalous scale shapes? On the head of this one you can see that not only are there many skin zones that are not armored by scales, but a somewhat nonbilateral-symmetry of scales. While color and markings are generally bilateral (each side being typically a mirrored pattern of the opposing side), some of the scales do not necessarily follow bilaterally symmetric rules? Such is the nature of mutated genes, eh? The next picture exaggerates this nonbilateral exception with black outlines of scales. One example does not indicate that perhaps only one side has more uniformly shaped scales, but you can see on the head of this snake that the left (picture-right) side of the head has notably “malformed” scales that are not the same shape as the scales on the right side of the head (picture-left)? Tomorrow’s SOTD demonstrates other features of this handsome corn snake mutant.