toDAY’s SNAKE of the DAY (Thu. Oct. 18, 2012)
The first description of this corn snake pattern mutation was published by the late Dr. H. Bernard Bechtel in the 1980s. His breeding trials demonstrated the heritability of this mutation to be simple recessive. The distinguishing feature of those is belly checkering. Good Motleys have an orderly and contiguous pattern of spots down the dorsum that represent spaces in what appears to be a continuous, wide stripe of color running from the neck tail-ward. The size, shape, location, organization, and number of circular pattern interruptions on the back define the grade of individuals, but until recently, the one pattern distinction we could rely upon was that of having no checkers on their belly. Lately, we’re seeing Motleys with some black checkering, but it’s random and sparse. I suspect that one DAY we’ll see Motleys with quite a bit of belly checkering. In fact, certain genetic compounds of Motley have somewhat reliable belly markings (i.e. Sunglow Motley and Lavender Motley).
Important Note:
These images are not renderings of the actual animals being offered, (except for uniquely offered snakes found in the SURPLUSsection 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 yourSMR snake if it does not mature to be like our advertised examples.
