'Super Hypo' (Any thoughts, Rich?)

Last summer Mike's Motleys was getting out of the business and had some highend adults for sale. I inquired about whether he had a hypo motley male, as I needed one for a project. He said he did, and at some point he called the snake a 'super hypo' motley (het butter). At the time, I assumed it was just a selectively-bred form of hypo, as indeed the hypo motley did not look like your average hypo... and, of course, because I'd inquired about a hypo moltey for a project, and he answered in the affirmative, I assumed that that hypo was compatable with plain ol' generic hypo A.... Anyway, I bought the snake, eventually wound up with it, though you can read about the shipping issue on the BOI if you care...
So I bred the 'super hypo' motley to my amber corn from Don... NO hypos. A clutch which should have been all hypos and ambers (and possibly amels and butters) hatched only normals and caramels (with an amel dead in egg).

Obviously 'super hypo' is not a variant of hypo A. The question is, what is it? Mike left me with the impression that he'd been in contact with Rich and atleast had showed him animals produced from the 'super hypo' strain... Does anyone know if 'super hypo' is recessive, or even if it's based off a single gene at all?

I showed Don a picture of the snake in question, and at first he thought it was amel... but I gave him a better pic of the eyes in comparison with some true amels, and he agreed that it was definitely different...

Here's the first pic, where he almost certainly looks like an amel...

...and then here's a pic of him when the flash ISN'T reflecting off his eye...

Finally, here's a(n older) collage of headshots with the same snake compared with an amel yearling. Notice how much difference there is in the eye color. Not only does his pupil show melanin, but the iris of his eye is the color that a hypo's would be, not the pure red of an amel.

So... anyone have any knowledge I don't? Or am I just going to have to use breeding trials to see if it's a heritable trait?

-Kat

wow...
but I can´t help you.
just one thing goes through my mind: t-pos albino...

Mike and I have talked about this a bit. This line of Hypo is actually the Ultra Hypo line that originated (if I remember correctly) from Mike Falcon. At least that is where I got my animals from, and I believe Mike did as well. I have spoken to Mike Falcon about this, and he said the original animal that started this line was a wild caught, very unusual looking corn snake. I don't know whom it was that actually found it.

The odd thing about this is that I bred one of my Ultra Hypo males into a regular female Hypo (at least I thought) years ago, and got all Hypos, so I just assumed that Ultra Hypo was just a variant based on an unusual line of normal corns bred into Hypo. But in subsequent years, the picture has gotten murky. I believe I have one female Hypo that is homozygous for one form of Hypo and heterozygous for the type that the Ultra Hypo appears to be. A clutch of babies will have two obvious sets of appearances showing two distinct hypo influences. So this appears to indicate that this particular Ultra Hypo male is also heterozygous for the standard type 'A' Hypomelanism. Except for other evidence I have.... Last year I bred this Ultra Hypo male to one of my Amber females (which I thought for sure was based on regular Type 'A' Hypo), and got ALL normals from the clutch. If that Ultra Hypo male is het for type 'A' Hypo, why didn't I get some Hypos from that breeding? How many genetic lines of Hypo ARE there?

Last year was a stressful year, no doubt. That was when I learned we are in Hypo Hell and there is now no way out of it.

Anyway, I don't remember exactly what Mike Shiver bred with his Ultra Hypos, but I know last year he had a bunch of animals that included Ambers het for Motley, Caramels het for Amber Motley, and even a few Amber Motleys, all from this Ultra Hypo line. I believe he bought some female Amelanistic Motleys from me years ago, and when they reached breeding size, he discovered he didn't have anything really suitable to breed to them. So he bred an Ultra Hypo male into them. At least that's the way I think it went. Mike and I talk a LOT at the shows and cover a lot of ground in the conversations..

So Kat, maybe now you can get a glimmer of why I was so skeptical a while back when Chuck was talking about being able to easily identify and categorize all of these cultivars of the corn snakes and make a sort of registry. I have been dealing with this mind bending stuff for years now.... And I don't expect it to get any better in the forseeable future, either. Righ now, NO one can breed a Hypo anything to something else Hypo and expect with 100 percent certainty that they will get 100 percent Hypo looking babies. Well, they can expect it, I guess, but only if they don't know what has happened to us all.

Thanks for the info, Rich... I guess I'm just going to have to approach the amber motley project from a different angle... fortunately the male is het caramel, so I can still use him... my odds are just going to be lower for producing double het F1's.

Darnit... if the hypo'd been compatable, I'dve had ambers het motley in the F1's... too good to be true, I suppose.

-Kat

I have thought seriously about changing my middle name to "Setback".

I have had so many projects set back a few years simply because the results of the first step were not what I had hoped nor expected them to be.

I can remember one year trying to beat the odds by breeding a really nice female Motley with one male Motley and a REALLY nice Ghost. I figured that I could kill two birds with one stone. Have some Motleys to sell off, yet have maybe half a clutch of a new line of Pastel Motleys to grow up. Of course, Muphy stepped in. I did get approximately half Motleys and half normsl (which were the het project corns, of course), But ALL of the Motleys were females and ALL of the normals were males. Shot that plan all to hell... So I don't try that trick any longer.

Originally posted by Rich Z
So Kat, maybe now you can get a glimmer of why I was so skeptical a while back when Chuck was talking about being able to easily identify and categorize all of these cultivars of the corn snakes and make a sort of registry.

Heh heh, yeah. When I started seeing how practical it would be, I ate crow on that one, too.

The thing that's interesting about this individual snake is that he's a hypo and a motley, both of which are supposed to reduce the amount of bordering around the saddles. (At least that's my theory, and few hypos or motleys contradict it, in my limited experience anyway.) Compare to a standard motley, and it's definitely "hypo" on top of it... even a dolt like me can see that. But compare to a regular "hypo motley" and it's bizarre-looking.

What I'm extremely curious about is that white bordering. Does this seem to be something that is "standard" in ultra-hypos? Is it only in the motley combos, or is that possibly a function of this particular brand of motley-ism? Is it just that this one snake is a total freak and there's no explanation to ever be found?

It could all turn into something very interesting... assuming we can actually put any puzzle pieces together.

The fun part is that now those hatchlings are double het for "both types of hypo" hehehe. Unless those two hypo types "pile up" to make a whole new phenotype, I doubt any answers will come from that any time soon.

And the other question is: "Kat, whatcha gonna breed him to if you want to try to get F2 "ultras" with no trace of "standard hypo" ancestry?" (I'd be screwed, even counting the ones coming up next year I've only got two females with no hypo in them... one's a crappy breeder, and the other's the center of my bloodred/pewter projects with about 50 males in line already. I really need to find a way to clone her, hehehe.)

"Kat, whatcha gonna breed him to if you want to try to get F2 "ultras" with no trace of "standard hypo" ancestry?"

Well... I have this nice lavender... Don't know if she's het hypo... I'd have to ask Don... I think that'd be the best pairing though, given how popular lav motleys are these days.

Beyond that, I also have a blizzard and a charcoal het bloodred that are unknowns in reguards to the hypo gene... but I think the lav'd be the best bet. Dang... I've got too many projects already now...

-Kat

Dang... I've got too many projects already now...

Believe me, it WON'T get any better for you....

A long time ago, I had this wildhare idea that eventually ALL I would have would be the wildest looking corn snakes you could imagine. Every cage would hold something more bizarre and interesting looking than the last one.

Well, this year I had the camera out, figuring I would take photos of the females and their eggs, since that would make interesting postings on this site. After a few days of that, it dawned on me that fully 75 percent of the photos I was taking was of normal colored corn snakes.

I think you all know what that little bit of insight means.

It was definitely a revelation for me..... And look how long I have been doing this.....