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100% one sex out of a clutch?

CowBoyWay

CowBoyWay

Cocked & Unlocked member
" It is not unusual to get a clutch of snakes that is either very heavily weighted with one sex or even 100 percent one sex"
Quote is from
Serpenco's,
Murphys laws of snake breeding at http://serpenco.com/text/murphy.html


Has anyone experienced clutches with 90-100% of one sex?
How common/uncommon is this?
 
Just last year I had 10 females out of 11 in the clutch. Te year before, it was 6 males out of 7 hatchlings. Same set-up, same everything.

Why? Who knows! It's just one of those cute little things about corns that keep us all humble! :eek:
 
I, too, have had a few "lop-sided" clutches, although not quite that high a %...in 2001, a clutch of 2.8 and last year, 4.1. And to add to Murphy's Law, you always end up with more of the sex that you DIDN'T want!
 
I thought the sex of the offspring was dependant on the incubation temps (like with crocodiles) :confused: I'm only assuming here, but that was what I was going to base my dissertation on in my honours year so I hope so!!
 
I have heard...

that it has not been proven that incubation temps affect the gender of snakes. It would be interesting to know...

I had two different clutches in my incubator at almost the same time. One clutch had 9 males and 8 females. The other clutch had 7 males and 1 female. Of course, the 1st clutch was put in 3-4 days before the second clutch. I guess that could affect the results.

I'll be looking forward to hearing from someone who has MUCH more experience with this. I'd really love to know if gender can be controlled by temps.
 
Sorry . . .

Although some reptiles (crocodilians and others) have temperature linked sex determination, this is not true for snakes (at least not for corn snakes!). I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wish it were though! Then I would always have the right number of hatchlings ready for customers wanting one sex over the other.

Now THAT would be a cool world to live in!

:eek:
 
Interesting, but not surprising

There are similar phenomenon in other species - humans, for example. When a woman gets pregnant the first time, there is about a 50/50 chance that the fertilized egg will be female or male. (Higher chance of giving birth to a girl, though, since male fetuses are much more fragile.) After having had one child, the chances that the second child will be of the same sex go up. After that, the chances of the third child being the same are even higher, and so on. It's like the mother's body develops a preference for one kind of sperm over the other. Strange but true.

So it doesn't surprise me at all that snakes could have clutches heavily weighted to one sex or the other.
 
i knew a woman

she desperately wanted to have a boy and after 7 girls she had one maybe her house was cold!but snakes definately are not temperature affected.
 
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