Susan, Joe, others working with blue / blued steel motleys - question on sheds.

[Hurley]

Hey guys,

Just a curiosity question, really. I was just cleaning and feeding and "Steel", my little male "blue motley" suspect had just shed a beautiful clean shed and as I'm looking at it I notice there's no trace of pigment on it anywhere. It looks like a blizzard or amel shed.

Just curious if any of you guys have noticed the same thing.

The anery mot siblings to this guy shed normally pigmented sheds.

 

[D&LCornSnakes]

i just pulled out a shed from my female about an hour ago. it was pigmented.

 

[Susan]

I'll make a mental note to try to remember to check when they shed again. They'll be due fairly soon.

 

[Susan]

OK...one just shed and, like Connie's, I couldn't find any trace of pigment. And for comparison, one of the anery mot siblings also shed, and it was chock full of pigment. Weird!

 

[ecreipeoj]

I only have a pair of adults at the moment, and when they shed, I will check it out. They both shed not long ago, so it may be awhile. Hopefully, I will be getting some hatchings soon as well. What do Ghost sheds look like? Do they have pigment like Anerys do? I will watch my Ghost next time they shed too. I haven’t really looked at sheds before, but I have heard you guys talking about it.

 

[Hurley]

My ghosts shed with pigment, though it's more faint than an anery. You can still see the pattern, though. My anery mot siblings of the "blues", like Susan said, shed with plenty of pigment. By comparison, the "blues" shed like a blizzard. No trace, not a wisp of pattern anywhere except perhaps the faintest hint of head pattern at the front of the head. (Can't tell if it isn't just dirt/stained shed.)

 

[Susan]

As I recall, my ghosts have some pigment, the amount depending upon exactly how light or dark a ghost it is. My females have a darker pigmented shed when compared to Boo's shed. I hope to be able to get a better look at some of the other blues' sheds as this one was, naturally, soaked as he tipped his water bowl over in the shedding process. But it didn't look any different from the amel and snow sheds I have been getting this week.

 

[Susan]

OK...hubby is coming up with an interesting theory. He's thinking that the color isn't a color at all, but some sort of condition in the scales themselves that is refracting the light to make it appear as if it is "blue". He's thinking it's like what makes a bird's feather blue. Birds do not have any blue pigment (but they do have reds, yellows, blacks, etc). The blue we see is actually refracted light, like what a prism does. He's also using his polarized sunglasses as an example of what may be happening. This sort of thing would explain the lack of pigment in the sheds.

He suggests examining the shed skin under a microscope and comparing it to both a normally pigmented shed skin (anery, ghost, etc) and a normally non-pigmented shed skin (amel, snow). If there is a difference in the scales, or how the scales are positioned, etc, we may be on to something.

I knew I smelled something burning. Hubby just torched another brain cell on this one.

 

[Hurley]

I think in a sense that's correct. Honestly what I think is happening is that the blues have the lower melanin layer where the melanocytes are (under the iridophores), but that the dendrites that normally stretch up to the outer layer and contribute the melanin that normally sheds off are what's being affected. The dendrites are either absent or the little melanin granules aren't travelling up into them normally or something. In normal anerys, those dendrites extend up there and get pinched off and incorporated into the soon to be shed old skin. I'm convinced the blues are melaninistic (not hypermelanistic, but their pattern/color is caused by melanin), but the distribution is not normal. The melanin seems buried below the refractive iridophores, leading to an effect like the blue in birds (and a less severe form than seen in the lavenders).

 

[ecreipeoj]

I hit Rob up with Hurley’s question, and this is what he had to say.

Joe
I just checked the sheds on the Blue Motleys and there is zero melanin on
the skins.

I don't have any sheds from the Hypo Lav x Blue motleys to look at,but I
should have some soon.

I will let you know as soon as I find something out on those.

Thanks Rob

I suggested to him, that perhaps he could identify which of his Hypos that he just produced from the Hypo Lav X Blue Motley line, are also homo for Dilute by checking the sheds. Since the Hypo parents are het for Lav, Anery, Dilute and Motley there is only a 25% chance that any of the clutch are also homo for Dilute.

Do you think this will work Connie?

 

[Hurley]

What I would do is check each shed from all the "hypos". If you've got several with faint pigment and a couple without any whatsoever, I'd say that's very, very....veryveryvery suspicious. :grin01:

Seems that the dilutes are going to be clear shedders if these guys are all the same thing.

 

[Hurley]

For grins and because she's getting so pretty, here's one of Susan's Blue Anery Mot girls that will be traveling to Daytona soon...

And here are some pics of her with her normal anery motley brother:

 

[keyea]

my snow, ghost and memphis havent ever had any pigment on the sheds