Snow VS Blizzard

[Lexcorn]

yellow in blizzards

An interesting hypothesis Don. I purchased a sibling pair of Blizzards in Dec '02, whilst the female began to show some yellow on her dorsal & ventral at approx. 5 months of age, the male remained a pure white colouration.

I considered the presence of the yellow in the female to be just another variation of this cultivar, however, it may be worth mating the female to a Snow or an Anery 'A' to verify your theory.

 

[Serpwidgets]

Now we have a larger group of folks on the watch, we might gather enough data to form a more reliable theory.

Agreed. It would be fun to test the different ideas and see if we can narrow down the field of possibilities.

But let's face it. Before the charcoals and blizzards were discovered to be non allelic to anery, people were breeding lots of snows to blizzards and aneries to charcoals. Heck even after they figured it out the practice continues today. Also the anery and charcoal genes have been swapped around so much that people breeding charcoal to charcoal OR blizzard to blizzard OR for that matter snow to snow could be unaware of the presence of the opposite color gene hiding in just one of the pairs, (homozygous or heterozygous).

I figured they've been mixed into each other a lot of times, but I was only considering that the first charcoal had anery in it and was bred to anery and snow to found the different lines. I hadn't considered it happening that way too. There should be quite a lot of them around, eh?

I've been curious what "anery + charcoal + whatever" combos would look like. I'll start a new thread specifically on that topic, see if maybe we can get some pictures.

 

[pls76]

Comparison?

my snow looks similiar to the first pic of your corns. shes has a very pearly white look to her and she has a light peach tone too

 

[Alias47]

I just wanted to bring up eye color again...
There were several posts regarding the snow and blizzard having "red" eyes.

They actually have PINK eyes...which are very different from the red eyes of a strictly amelanistic cornsnake (or amelanistic ANYTHING for that matter...LOL)...the anery, "a" or "b"(snow or blizzard), takes away the red pigment as well.
Really is irrelevant to this thread...just wanted to clarify.

I have some animals that will be producing (fingers crossed) offspring homozygous for amel, charcoal, AND anery...the anery is guaranteed (unless some sort of genetic mutation spontaneously occurs :crazy02: )
The breeders are an anery het charcoal amel female and an amel anery het charcoal male. They are descended from Gardenmum's blizzard.

 

[SODERBERGD]

The eyes have it . . .

I just wanted to bring up eye color again...
There were several posts regarding the snow and blizzard having "red" eyes.

They actually have PINK eyes...which are very different from the red eyes of a strictly amelanistic cornsnake (or amelanistic ANYTHING for that matter...LOL)...the anery, "a" or "b"(snow or blizzard), takes away the red pigment as well.
Really is irrelevant to this thread...just wanted to clarify.
QUOTE]

Obviously, perception is everything. The red you see in the eye is blood. I guess there's less of it flowing in the snows OR something is causing the blood to be less visible. Except for that occasional black fleck you see in albino snakes' eyes, the eye is completely clear.

Often, the angle or amount of light dictates how red the eye will appear. I have some snows that have eyes as red as other amels. Perhaps they have high blood pressure or something. lol.

Don
www.cornsnake.NET

 

[gardenmum]

I have some snows that have eyes as red as other amels. Perhaps they have high blood pressure or something. lol.

Sounds to me like you need to be looking into some high blood pressure meds for those guys.

They actually have PINK eyes...which are very different from the red eyes of a strictly amelanistic cornsnake (or amelanistic ANYTHING for that matter...LOL)...the anery, "a" or "b"(snow or blizzard), takes away the red pigment as well.
Really is irrelevant to this thread...just wanted to clarify.

Well, actually, all of my snow and amel have "red" eyes as in the iris/pupil color. The sclera (humans = whites of the eye) are different. In the snows, as babies, all of mine were whitish but when they got to be older than yearlings this changed to pink/red.

Now, on the amels, the sclera is a clear reddish color as hatchlings but doesn't appear to take long to start slowly turning shades according to their body color (i.e. yellowish or orangy), reflective of the body color like normals and anery do. All my Amels het for butter have a yellowish/orange tint sclera and they have very yellow base colors, my two Amel het anery have orange/red sclera and they have orangy base colors.

So, my thoughts are that it is POSSIBLE that the snow are completely devoid of any color intensifiers in the eye so therefor what we see is the only the color made from the blood, while, like the normals and anery, the amels have some intensifiers to the sclera of the eye but not the iris/pupil part which would cause the sclera to take on a similar tone to the body color but the pupil would be red. NOW this is just a guess on looking at how the eye colors seem to be affected. I could be wrong.

Here are some pictures of my snows and the blizzard I had. The first two pictures are of my snow stripe. The first one as a few month old baby shows that the sclera is whitish and the pupil red. But after a short time goes by, the sclera become reddish (second pic). The same thing goes for the rest of the snows I have pictured. The blizzard (the third pictured), I can't say about her as a baby as I got her as an adult. But all have red "eyes" now.

The next post I will put pictures of the amels eyes.

 

[gardenmum]

These are the amels.

The first three are het for butter. You can see the yellowish body tones and the yellowish/orange sclera. The last two are amel het anery. These do not have the yellish tone but have an orangy tone instead.

Just found this all interesting. And, as I said, I could be wrong, but it does "appear" that the snow has a "clear" eye in which all parts show the blood but the amels have something more going on in the sclera part but do have the blood showing in the pupil part.

 

[Alias47]

I apologize...
I believe Dianne may have hit it right on the head...the sclera is the source of my confusion...

I just had all my snakes out last night...it was cleaning and rearranging day...and I noticed that the intense red of the amel definitely had to do with the deeply RED sclera on mine...while my snow does appear to have quite pink eyes...I can see from both of your photos it must depend on the angle or light...and the sclera color having a major effect as well.

Of course the flash ALWAYS causes redeye

 

[SODERBERGD]

Yes, sclera. . .

Dianne, you sure set that one straight. I hope you'll do more comparisons for us. My data was for mammals and way off for serpents. Thanks for that information.

Don
www.cornsnake.NET

 

[Serpwidgets]

What I've noticed is that iris color tends to be the same as either the saddle color or ground color. Some are between those two colors. Most appear to be very similar to the saddle color, and only a few of mine have eyes that match the ground color.

This seems to go for any morph and includes amels/anerys/etc.

I have wondered if there's any correlation to how the pattern intercepts the eyeball, such as the height of the saddle-colored bar that crosses the eye. I haven't sat down to take a good look at that to see if there's any apparent link between the two. I've also wondered if there's a Mendelian trait controlling eye color.

We have eye pictures on all of our collection at http://cccorns.com if anyone wants a good-sized sample to look at.

 

[Alias47]

Now I am back to being confused again...and have a thought for all of you.

Look at Miriya and Pinky on Serps page...both are snows and both appear to have pink eyes...look at ANY of the amels...regardless of red in their pattern...all appear to have red eyes.

My thought was this...since normals have black eyes(and any of the forms of amel do NOT)...their eyes very obviously have a fair amount of melanin present. Wouldn't this be the same for erythrin as well, having some degree of presence would affect the intensity of the red appearance of an amels eyes...versus a snow that does not have the erythrin present. I still believe sclera coloration definitely plays a role...but what of the structure of the eye itself?

 

[Serpwidgets]

Here's an example of the saddle color vs ground color. (These are both hypo motleys.)

Saddle color:

Ground color:

 

[Serpwidgets]

My thought was this...since normals have black eyes(and any of the forms of amel do NOT)...their eyes very obviously have a fair amount of melanin present. Wouldn't this be the same for erythrin as well, having some degree of presence would affect the intensity of the red appearance of an amels eyes...versus a snow that does not have the erythrin present. I still believe sclera coloration definitely plays a role...but what of the structure of the eye itself?

Hmm, I've never even thought of the possibility of erythrin on the retina. (Wow, gotta love those "duh" moments, LOL.)

If they are both present, then normals could still have black pupils because melanin is usually much more concentrated on the retina to absorb light so that it doesn't bounce around inside the eye. Amels would have "red" pupils because you're actually seeing erythrin. Snows would have pink/red pupils because you're only seeing blood.

I'll have to look in person. With photos the color can change drastically depending on the angle of the flash and whether the eye is pointed at the camera or somewhere else. (If you do it right, you can get overhead pics of amels that look like they have "black" pupils.)

 

[Alias47]

My original post was based on this assumption...and people HAVE shown examples of red eyes in snakes that have no erythrin by proven genetics...which was the source of my confusion.

I personally can see a difference in the eyes of amels versus the eyes of snows...on most of the animals I have seen...but I don't have the experience of having the number of examples that the people who have responded to my post do (Don, Dianne, and Chuck)...so it caused me to question my "theory" (amazing how human nature makes it so easy to take what is really a "theory" and personally accept it as fact based on belief, huh? Guilty as charged :shrugs: )