Category: SOTD

Snake of the Day 05-12-18

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A few DAYs ago I discussed the SUNRISE mutation, which is largely considered a gene modifier, since it’s most dramatic exhibition is with the Amel (albino) mutation.  . BUT the Sunrise mutation is a recessively inherited single mutated gene.  The extra pictures toDAY demonstrate the belly color and pattern of two different Sunrise Amel mutants.  BTW, many people show an Amel corn with the caption SUNRISE CORN, but what they should be qualifying is that it’s a SUNRISE AMEL.  I saw some confusion about this in some recent FaceBook discussions.  The SUNRISE mutation was so-named because the Sunrise Amels start life often looking like a Snow corn with a blush of pink or orange.  Within a few short weeks, that blush of color blooms to a beautiful red-orange.  To those of us who have seen many different types of Amel corn snakes the shade of red in most adult Sunrise Amels is something very different, compared to all the other shades of red or orange Amel corns?  It is not my intention to imply that all adult Sunrise Amels display this distinct shade of red.  Through maturity–the colors continue to intensify, resulting in a deeply red Amel corn snake.  How this mutation affects other color mutations and wild types is still largely undocumented–if remarkable at all?  BONUS  PICs . . .

Snake of the Day 05-14-18

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This 2016 female Fire Motley (Amel Diffused Motley) is refreshingly orange, compared to the red Fires I usually make.  I’m not being facetious.  I REALLY like her color.  Thanks, Jud McClanahan in Kansas for making this beautiful corn.  I also like the missing head scale?  Could that missing scale be the result of a gene mutation?  We’ll see.  

Snake of the Day 05-15-18

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Two 2017 hatchling Scaleless corn snakes (a Scaleless Tessera and an aberrant Scaleless wild-type).  

note:  ALL Scaleless corns in the hobby toDAY (including SCALED corns that are carriers of the Scale-less mutation–aka Het Scaleless) are descendants of the original pairing of a Corn Snake to an Emory’s Ratsnake (aka: Great Plains Ratsnake).  Therefore, all Scaleless corns (and their scaled siblings) are inter-species hybrids.  

Snake of the Day 05-31-18

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This female corn (het for Cinder, Lava, and Sunkissed) was bred to a male with the same mutated genes.  She laid her eggs on May 10th, and her sister should have laid a clutch around May 18th (writing this article on May 11th).  Of course, hitting the jackpot of getting a Sunkissed Cinder Lava is unlikely, but there should be some interesting almost “jackpot” genotypes in these clutches?  UPDATE  BONUS  PIC . . .

Snake of the Day 05-16-18

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Not much red yet, but . . . . . 

This Striped Bloodred will be much redder in the next year, and did you notice the lateral color?  The parents of this snake were both het for the Pied-sided (aka: P/S) gene mutation.  I won’t instigate debate by calling this one a white-less p/s Bloodred, but the different shades of red on the sides are commonly seen on many P/S Bloodreds, regardless of their volume of lateral white. 

Snake of the Day 05-17-18

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Scaleless Tessera corn snake.  Until the first Scaleless Tessera hatched, we were unaware that the Tessera mutant pattern was the aggregate of pattern elements from more than one dermal layer.  If the outer dermal layers (epiderm) was on this snake, it would be easily identified as a Tessera mutant, but in the absence of the epidermis, striping is overt, and usually flawlessly contiguous.