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Just to clarify a detail concerning the history of the Caramel gene.
The original animal that produce the Caramel gene for me was a wild caught NORMAL looking adult female purchased from a pet shop in Cape Coral, Florida. The reason I purchased this animal out of all the rest there was because of it's unusual straw colored background color. I discussed the source of the animals with the owner who verified that those were all wild caught animals brought in from local collectors. Matter of fact, a friend of mine, Tim Hoen, was with me at the time we visited that pet shop. What was interesting was that we both looked into that tank with the corn snakes, and both said "Wow! Look at that one!" at the same time, but reached in and grabbed two different animals that caught our eyes. His did not catch my eye, and mine did not catch his eye. People just see different things in animals, I guess. I was looking for corns to use in breeding projects based on their color combined with, at that time, the ONLY color altering genes available for the corn snake: Amelanism and Anerythrism. I don't believe that Bill and Kathy Love had come up with Hypomelanism yet at that time.
Anyway, the inferred theory posted in this thread that the animal could have been from a captive breeding program sort of falls apart when the fact is realized that there was never another animal offered or known of similar in appearance to the Caramel gene prior to my producing the original Caramels and Butters.
Could the pet shop owner have been lying to me about the source of that animal? Certainly! Quite frankly, unless you catch an animal yourself out in the wild, you are always going to be at the mercy of the honesty of the person selling you an animal as to it's actual and truthful source. And had other Caramel looking animals shown up in the market around the same time, I would have to say that this would be pretty clear evidence of the possibility of a parallel breeding project being done by another breeder working with this uncovered gene. But since that did not happen, to the best of my knowledge, I feel pretty safe in saying that I believe that pet shop owner's story. If there is evidence otherwise, I am all ears....
So, I had bred that wild caught female carrier with a snow corn in the hopes that from an area nearby known for wild caught Anerythristics, perhaps anerythrism was lurking in her gene pool. And I also wanted to see what that straw colored background would do when combined with Amelanism. All normals hatched out, which at the time seemed unfortunate, but I kept several anyway and when I bred THEM together, that is when I hatched out what I eventually named the "Caramel Corns" and the "Butter Corns".
Of course, I did testing with that Caramel gene to Anerythrism to make certain that it just was not an odd variation of Anerythrism. The Caramel corns were only slightly different looking than Anerythristic at hatching, so it actually took a few sheds before I realized they could possibly be something different. As for the Butter Corns, well, I just though that the yellowish looking ones were a result of the straw colored background that existed in the original female that produced this line. Honestly, I came VERY close to selling off the entire batch of them before I realized that I had something very different.
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