What is albino?

[Eiram]

I know it sounds like a silly question, and maybe I'm just over thinking this, but what is an "albino" corn snake?

Let me try to explain my thinking. The scientific definition of albino (according to google) is:

1. (Medicine / Pathology) a person with congenital absence of pigmentation in the skin, eyes, and hair
2. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Biology) any animal or plant that is deficient in pigment

Basically, lacking pigmentation= albino? So would that mean that both light colored and dark colored morphs can be technically considered a type of albino since they are lacking pigmentation? Amels- lacking black pigmentation, anery/charcoal/granite- lacking yellow/red pigmentation.

Perhaps I'm thinking about this all wrong, which would not be that surprising :shrugs: :crazy02: So, how far off am I, details in your explanations are much appreciated

 

[Shiari]

Broken down into it's components, alb means 'white'. This is what we humans are used to thinking of because in mammals, you remove black pigment and you are left with a white animal. So most people, when faced with morphs, tend to assume that snows are the albinos.

This doesn't work as well in reptiles, because they make three pigments. You remove one, and you don't have a white animal. This causes a lot of confusion for newbies, so the term 'albino' is not endorsed. That is why we use amel (amelanism a- lacking, melanin- black) and anery (anerythrism an-lacking, erythrin- red) instead of albino.

 

[Eiram]

I agree that it's not an accurate term, which is how this question came up. Some one said that amels aren't albinos because they weren't white. They went on to say that snows are the true albino and I said that I thought that amels technically were albino too so they shouldn't refer to snows as just "albino." When asked why, I stated the above definition of albino which is what got me thinking that the darker morphs could technically be albino.

Now, granted, I'm not going around calling a wide range of morphs albino, but was in fact using it as an example of why no morph, even the snows should just be called albino since the term actually applies to many morphs. Or so I think.

 

[Shiari]

The person in question should be educated about the meanings of the words, and the fact that snakes make more pigment than the animals we usually call 'albinos'. Amels are the closest analogous morph to mammalian albinos, because both lack black pigment.

But that's just my opinion on what to do, because I love breaking people's brains with explanations until they simply give in. I think it comes from dealing with the stupid at work as a vet tech.

 

[Tavia]

Yes, your thinking is in a way correct and some people do actually label their amels "Red Albinos" and their aneries "Black Albinos" but its not really endorsed in the wider corn breeder community because, as Shiari said, it lacks precision when applied to snakes, since a Red Albino is one distinct gene, Black Albino another distinct gene and a Snow, which pretty much all lay people would also slap the title "Albino" onto, is actually expressing two different "Albino" type genes. And then you have Opals and Blizzards etc ... If you just called them all Albinos, you would be right in a way but those are all different genes and combos of genes, so you can see where the term "albino" would lack clarity when applied to all of those all at once.