Is there a difference???

[Petruga]

Hey i was at a reptiles show today at the CRBE, and i had an opportunity to get a pair of hognose that were 100% red albino, and also a pair of 100% albino. i was just wondering if there is a difference between the 2?

 

[Tavia]

I think the red ones are a color phase & are redder than normals. But I don't know a great deal about them, I'm sure one of the members on here who does can confirm or deny that. I've thought of getting one & have checked them out quite a bit but haven't got into the genetics or much into the color phases.

 

[Nanci]

The hognose expert on this forum is Troy, Deadmouse. I _think_ there's a lot of discussion about morphs in the Cyrano Hognose thread.

 

[Kanchii]

Red albinos are simply a line bred albino. if you breed two red normals (which is a line bred normal, just ones that have high red on them) that are het for albino your going to produce albinos that look more red/dark orange than typical albinos.

normal albino:

red albino, which genetically is the SAME THING as the normal albino but has been line bred to have more red:

 

[DeadMouse]

Hey i was at a reptiles show today at the CRBE, and i had an opportunity to get a pair of hognose that were 100% red albino, and also a pair of 100% albino. i was just wondering if there is a difference between the 2?

Well, there's a misconception going on here. There is no actual thing as a 100% het red albino. There is though a 100% het albino. You see, the red coloring is not a simple Mendelian Trait (single gene). It's what many call a line trait but this is rather ambiguous because a line trait is basically a polygenic trait which means that there's more than one gene that controls that particular aspect of the animal, whether it's color, pattern or even actual physical attributes.

The problem with trying to create an animal with a polygenic trait is that you typically have to selectively breed and inbreed animals in order to keep that particular trait active. It's difficult to determine which of those genes are going to be passed along, which are dominant, which are recessive and so forth. If the red in an extreme red were part of the albino trait, then those animals should always breed true but they don't. If you breed an extreme red to a typical albino, you might get some redder than usual albinos, but the chances of producing another extreme red out of that pairing is slim. You normally would have to take the F1's from that pairing and breed them back to the extreme red parent to try and produce more extreme reds, unfortunately you do not know at this point if the F2's or F3's would produce the same amount of red as in your parent animal due to the dilution of genes from the normal albino parent. This is why polygenic/line traits are not as easy to produce and why an animal like this should never be sold as a het. If anything, it should have been labeled as Red het Albino, not het Red Albino. There's a huge difference there and you might end up with less than desirable results. There's a reason why you don't see too many extreme red animals being sold, because they are difficult to reproduce genetically and it takes years to produce F2's and F3's to breed back to the parents to reproduce those types of traits.

I hope that is helpful!

 

[Petruga]

Yes this is very helpful, thanks alot!