Category: SOTD

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.

A cute little Lava Tessera corn snake mutant.  Judging from its neonatal colors, this snake will surely be eye-popping as an adult. 

 

MY error. Thank you, John (and others), for pointing out that I originally called it a Lava Bloodred this morning.  Don’t know where my brain was when I published this toDAY?

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.

This unassuming adult female Tessera generally looks like most Tesseras toDAY, but she MAY become the second verified homozygote (aka: Super Form) of her mutation.  I say “MAY” because the jury is still out.  She laid 16 outwardly viable eggs this year, but only 13 of them hatched. Happily, those 13 are Tesseras and all het for Scaleless Anery.  I stop short of getting too excited that she could be a homozygote because the three embryos that did not survive full-term incubation may not have been Tesseras.  Hence, next year I will breed her again, and if 100% of her progeny are Tesseras, I’ll be 98% certain that she is a Super Tessera.  One more year of 100% visual Tesseras after that and I’ll be 99.9% certain.  If she is a homozygote, she presents a conundrum.  Most homozygotes of mutations that are dominant to wild-type in our hobby have a noticeably different appearance from their heterozygotes. This Tessera exhibits no obvious markers that indicate she is not a typical Tessera, since she looks like most Tesseras in the hobby.  We don’t call Tesseras “Hets”, but if not a Super Tessera, all Tesseras are actually the Het form of their mutation (until proven otherwise via breeding trials).  Unlike the hets of Amel, Anery, Motley, and all the other recessively-inherited mutations whose hets look more like common corns, the hets of Tesseras visually demonstrate the mutation. No common-looking corn can be het for Tessera. 

Note: So far, produced by Graham Criglow several years ago, the only known Tessera homozygote (aka: Super Tessera) belongs to Vin Russo at https://cuttingedgeherp.com (if you know of another, please, let me know). To date, every corn his Tessera has sired was a Tessera.  It’s somewhat unusual in our hobby for a Homo and Het with the same mutation to look alike, but not unprecedented.  IF this female turns out to be a Super Tessera, she — and the one owned by Vin — will be inexplicably rare snakes.  Inexplicable because from pairing two Tesseras, approximately 25% of their progeny should be Super Tesseras.  Since several thousand Tessera corns have been produced in the past few years and some were the products of Tessera X Tessera pairings, where are all the homozygotes Mendel predicted?

 

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.

In the upper photo is one of the 2013 hatchling Hurricane Anery Motleys and in the lower photo is her mother.  This adult looked very much like her hatchling when she was this age, but it appears that the 2013 hatchling (and its siblings from this female) will have even thicker black blotch margins at maturity. Virtually all Anery mutants to date hatch with the colors seen in the upper image; black and white.  As they mature, the white turns to gray, but the black seen in this adult is what the above hatchling will have at maturity.  All hatchling Aneries do not exhibit the carotenoid yellow seen in this adult, but most will slowly and continually exhibit this yellow which they retain from the carotenes in their rodent diet.  

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.

These two corn snakes have nothing in common, nor are they necessarily slated for future marriage.  I just wanted to show two snakes in one DAY instead of making you wait one extra DAY to see the second one.  The orange corn is the 2011 product of pairing a Java Striped Amel to a Striped Amel Sunrise.  She displays the color rendition of Amel + Java and also appears to be a Striped Sunrise.  You can barely see the depigmented scales that are tracing the borders of the dorso–lateral stripes, resembling what scarred scales look like on most albino-type corns that have had serious injury.  This depigmented scale lines are not the result of scarring on this snake, but from the gene mutation, Sunrise.  As hatchlings, Sunrise Amel mutants resemble Snow corns but with an over-all blush of orange color. Within weeks, the snow look gives way to that of an Amel and within one year their Amel colors are deeply saturating.  Between one and three years of age, most Sunrise Amel mutants that are also Striped or Motley mutants begin to exhibit scale color-desaturation that mostly follows the edges of their mutant pattern.  Classic Sunrise Amel corns are not orange like this one, but the Java “morph” obviously altered the Amel appearance to an overall orange coloration.

This 2012 Palmetto demonstrates how deeply their colors saturate in just one year of maturity, compared to the color-flecking sometimes barely discernable when they are newly hatched.  This one also exhibits some red color splashes close to the head.  I estimate that only one out of 15-20 have such splashes of color, but perhaps one out of eight have this much dark black flecking.  

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.

2013 Hatchling Okeetee-types:

1.  Two different color shades of Buckskin Okeetees.  Oddly enough, most of the time the ones with the orange ground color will mature to be Buckskin-colored and the Miami-ish looking ones usually end up maturing to be Buckskin-colored also. These obviously have the polygenetic banded pattern.  

2.  A Banded Buckskin Okeetee.  Usually marketed as Banded Okeetees on our web site (sometimes Banded Extreme or Banded Buckskin Okeetees. 

3.  A Miami Okeetee.  When I enlisted the genetic aid of a nice Gary Kettring Miami phase corn to help me make better Buckskin Okeetees, little did I know they would render some very nice silver Miami phase corns with the thick Okeetee blotch margins.  We market ones like this as Miami Okeetees in SNAKES FOR SALE on this site.  

Not altogether unlike aberrant patterns that are so common in many Okeetee specimens in our hobby, banding is not rare.  It’s easy to breed away from the banding, but making Okeetees that have consistent and mostly uniform saddles can be difficult if lines are plagued with such aberrancies.  Obviously, they are not the result of a gene mutation, but from polygenic traits.  Most aberrant Okeetees are in the form of conjoined markings – sometimes involving as many as ten blotches.  

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.

Portrait of a 2011 Scaleless Extreme Okeetee Corn Snake.  

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.

 

Not all, but many of the exceptional Okeetee variants begin as the color-opposite of their beautiful mature counterparts; lackluster.  The dark snake in the left-hand image is a Buckskin Okeetee.  His markings barely (if at all) exhibit the rich mahogany colors they’ll display at maturity.  Some equally beautiful Okeetee Variants exhibit colored markings as soon as they hatch, so don’t gage the potential of either neonatal look.  The Buckskin Okeetee has no relationship to the Creamsicle Bloodred.  I just wanted contrast in the picture since I chose such a dark substratum.  But while I’m here, I may as well show a more orange sibling of that Creamsicle Okeetee.   

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.

This busily marked 2013 female Tessera (two angles of the same snake) is the product of pairing a Tessera (Het Amel) to a Candy Cane.  Aside from her chaotic markings, her head almost seems to glow, apparently from being a lighter shade of red than the rest of her body. BTW, there’s that cute red tail tip like one I showed you on a different Tessera over a week ago.  And “yes” she ate a plump pinky mouse just an hour before posing for pictures. 

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.

 

First Yawn??  Perhaps, but more likely the only way to satisfy an itch (in the absence of limbs) when separating epidermal generations tickle?  Just a family of Snow corns hangin out together, waiting for their first shed. At right, arguably the least colored & patterned corn snake morph, the Whiteouts (Bloodred Blizzards) on the right are the whitest corns there are (other than Palmettos, that is).  Naturally, these are pink now, but most of our adult Whiteouts are virtually pure white with no carotenoid yellow on them.  The gold flakes on these snakes is from the vermiculite hatch medium.

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.

The dorsal “stripe” on this Bloodred Tessera resembles highway lane markers. He is five weeks old, and demonstrates his love for frozen/thawed pinky mice in this image.  He is $350.00 shipped (U.S. domestic shipping only). 

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