Well, I don't reall know for sure if I have Opal Motleys or not. Here's a photo of one of them 'maybes':
Sure looks like it might be an Opal Motley, now doesn't it?
Well here's the problem. Back when I started this project, I bred an Opal Corn (Amelanistic Lavender) to a normal colored Motley. Come to find out that that Opal male is also het for 'A' Anerythrism. So when these babies hatch out, are the Opal Motleys, Snow Motleys or quad homozygous animals (Amelanism, Lavender, Anerythrism, & Motley)? Snow Motleys already look quite different from the Motley influence, and I must confess that I only get this sort of animal from some other projects I am working with. So by eyeballing them, I really don't know what the heck they are. Certainly the odds are that SOME of them are Opal Motleys, but which ones?
I'll tell you what, this 'A' Anerythrism gene has turned out to be a really bad penny that shows up nearly everywhere and gums up the results of a lot of my projects. I used to think it was a positive survival trait that is causing the native populations to gradually get more and more of these genetic diversions into the general population. But now I'm not so sure. I'm leaning more towards there being a factor that just makes more of them show up in a given population than a normal single recessive trait should. Or maybe it is the first example of a genetic trait that is transmitted via some sort of airborne vector.
Darn if I know, but I think it is getting to the point where finding animals without Anerythrism in their gene pool is going to be very difficult to do.