• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

My baby, Monty! Can anyone tell what morph he is?

Monty

New member
Sorry if i'm using the wrong terminology, I think he is a normal (or a carolina classic as it is called on one website). I am know close to nothing about morphs and colors, but I think the entire thing is fascinating and I'm trying to learn more. I don't really care what he is, I just want to know what to say when someone asks me what kind of snake I have (besides just saying "corn", lol.)

I've had him for three weeks, he was a difficult eater at first but has taken two pinkies on schedule with gusto since then. I've recently started handling him, about 5-10 minutes a day, and he is absolutely docile! I've never seen him get into "strike position", and he rarely tries to slither away. He will just calmly cruise through my hands and climb around my fingers. He enjoys climbing on his branches but falls sometimes, and I've also found him resting on the lip of the tank. I'm so happy to have become a new snake owner... they really are quite fascinating!

Well here is Monty, perhaps I'm biased but he is truely the most beautiful snake I've ever seen :p
Never posted a picture before so heres my first attempt:
14180_4500451182350_1308552722_n.jpg
 
He looks like a beautiful normal. It's strange how his head almost looks like a diffused snakes head would look. Also kind of looks like he has split belly checks? Could you take a pic of his belly just for curiosity's sake.
 
He looks like a beautiful normal. It's strange how his head almost looks like a diffused snakes head would look. Also kind of looks like he has split belly checks? Could you take a pic of his belly just for curiosity's sake.

I definitely will! Unfortunately it will probably have to wait until friday because I just fed him last night... but I am very curious to what you are talking about so i'll get the picture up asap... :D
 
So normal with a chance of being het diffused, what is the coloring difference of the two? What colors can I expect him to have when he turns adult?
 
Hopefully this thread will get revisited, as I'm super curious to this diffused business, haha. I have finally had a photoshoot with my little guy. Hopefully I got enough of his belly to tell for sure whats going on, he definitely was shy about showing it!

403056_4548028091743_2125696253_n.jpg


59682_4548105493678_2034221866_n.jpg
 
I'm not entirely sure if there are het markers for diffused, but I'd say there's a very high chance of it. He has both split belly checks and the head markings of diffused. Just his color is off and his sides show no diffusion. Only for sure way to tell is breeding trials.
 
Definitely an interesting little guy! Diffusion is a pattern morph and his belly and head have the look of it but not his sides. Bloodred is a line bred color morph/form of diffusion. I have no idea what Masque is, as no one will explain it to me but it seems to be similar to diffusion. I also have an odd snake like yours. He is not supposed to have the diffusion gene, but has the head and sides of one. But he has very strong belly checks.
 
This snake is a Masque. It's a dominant trait that can be separated from diffusion, and seems to affect the level of diffusion. It produces the blurred head pattern and creates a split in the belly checkers.

For example, Vanay is a Masque. I paired him with Lacy, a pewter with crappy diffusion. When you can look at her up close, she has a normal head pattern and fully patterned sides. I got from this pairing several high expression masque animals. But no diffused, despite 14 eggs. And not all the babies were masque.
I also paired him with a butter het diffused. 18 eggs. No diffused. Again, I had some high expression masque animals, and some not so much and some not at all.
I also paired him with a ghost, NOT het diffused. I had some Masque again.

It is very unlikely he is het for diffused at this point.
 
Very interesting! Thanks for explaining that! So Masque always produces split belly checks? I was wondering if my boy Vash might be Masque instead of het diffuse but his checkers aren't split, at least if I remember right. Really need to get a shot of his underside at some point.
 
Just to show a bit of what we are talking about, this is an older picture of my odd little boy Vash.
963a8d14.jpg

And then a newer one. You can see on his head and how his sides are smeared and disappear.
000_0129.jpg
 
I think Masque is mostly head pattern at its most basic. Chuck and Connie were working with it, but not much has come out from them recently. It *has* been proven that the 'het diffused' look is not tied to the diffused gene, and so they called it Masque.

I had a 'high expression' masque that was also het diffused from Lacy's clutch. He almost looked like a pewter, but there was a smidge of belly pattern along the sides. Considering that Lacy has crappy diffusion for the most part, most of this influence would have been from Vanay who has a funky head and split checkers... but no fading of the side pattern. So Masque itself probably has a polygenic component just like diffused and pied-sidedness.
 
Not meaning to hijack this thread, but I just got Vash out to check on his belly and he does have split checkers, especially on the lower third of his body. So it might be reasonable to call him a Masque? Where that is a pattern morph, it would be listed second right? Like a normal motley, the OP would call their's a Normal Masque and Vash would be a Phantom Masque?
If Vash is a Masque, then if I bred him to my female, Stormy (Phantom, 50% het Amel, no diffusion supposed to be there) then based on your experience, I should get some offspring expressing Masque to some extent or other.
 
Back
Top