Susan
Go Ahead, Make My Day!
Susan i'm a little confused, you said in your first post that he's definitely not motley but then explain his colour as being typical of motley? If he's an abbarrant motley then that doesn't explain why i've never gotten motley out of many pairings from each parent that should have shown up if there was a het involved. If he's just a caramel that looks different, then he's still different as has been the question all along, and therefore not just a pretty caramel?
I'm honestly not being argumentative for the sake of itbut although i'm not an expert, i am by no means a novice. I know that genetically he is at least a caramel het hypo stripe, but i have never seen another caramel like him, hence the confusion.
It seemed to me, and I may just misunderstood, that you have been questioning both this snake's color as well as pattern. According to the parent's genetics, it must be caramel in color, which to me, it most definitely is without a doubt. It is NOT look like a normal het whatever.
The second question concerns the pattern. Dorsally and on the side, it looks like a motley, but the belly says "No". However, upon doing some research, there have been known motleys that show some belly checks, just not as many as this snake does...yet. It is possible, since you know that the one parent is stripe, for either the male to be het motley (and you've just had really bad luck getting the male to pass on that gene to any other offspring, which IS a possibility) or for some sort of natural mutation to have occurred in this snake that caused the gene half from the male to change just enough to affect the dorsal and side pattern but only partially affect the belly pattern. Both scenarios may have tremendously hideous odds of happening...but they CAN happen.
Since this is a male, you have the advantage of being able to test breed him to various females. Most definitely pair him with his mother. That will prove his caramel color, his being het stripe and if anything NOT stripe hatches out, his being het motley, het normal or het something new, depending upon the results. I would also pair him with a normal (or as close as possible) that is definitely not het caramel, not het motley, not het stripe and not het Sunkissed, to do the most to isolate the possible new mutation. Since there was the question of a Sunkissed father, test him with a Sunkissed as well, to try to answer that question. And if you have any sibling females, or other females sired by that amber male, it would be worth it to pair him with them, just in case it was a mutation in the father that may have been passed on as a hidden het to more than just this snake.
