Unnamed "Red/Hypo" Diamond Jungles

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
This page is a bit of a train wreck right now, but I am working on it. 

The debate...
I wasn't ready to do much talking on these, but I posted some pics on facebook and people started asking, so I posted one of these snakes for sale in my online store. It created quite the buzz on one of the forums, which I don't even visit, and I was called out for calling it dominant!  By none other than my competition, of course. 

Speculation - or accusations I should say - ranged from breeding Bredl's or Irian Jayas into them to make half the babies come out red and the other half black (of course it doesn't work that way), to someone actually suggesting that I somehow managed to get red phase coastals confused with Diamond x Jungles.   These guys made all those comments, mind you, without actually seeing the snakes as they get older.  They should've waited a few days for me to post adult photos.

The bottom line is this - the original "red" or "rust colored" snakes I acquired are Diamond x Jungle crosses.  These snakes looking nothing at all like an Irian Jaya or Bredli cross - and I have owned and raised a few Jungle/Bredli and Irian Jaya/Jungle crosses. Nor do they resemble the red phase coastal - yes, they are the same color for a few weeks as hatchlings, but so are the co-dominant caramels.

As mentioned earlier, this "morph" (or more correctly, phenotype) has been proven to work in a dominant "on/off" fashion. There is no in-betweens, they are either "red" or "black" - even when coastal was mixed in to introduce the Jaguar gene, the non "red" babies were distinctly black in pattern. It occurs in roughly half of the offspring when bred to a non "red" mate and there have been two confirmed (see photos) subsequent generations of these produced.· The "red" offspring looked nearly identical, despite the second clutch being 50% coastal due to a Jaguar sire.·he mother of my original snakes was also reportedly red as a baby - making her the third generation going back.

Here is the story in bits and pieces...I will be adding more photos in the next couple days.

I purchased some oddly colored carpets from a breeder in 2004 (slight correction - I thought 2006).  They were the product of a high yellow male jungle carpet bred to an off-white colored Diamond x Jungle cross - this female was red as a baby as well, but the breeder had no baby photos of her. 

Here is the photo I received when these snakes were offered for sale.  The offspring consisted of roughly half somewhat "hypo" looking rust colored snakes and half traditionally pigmented black snakes.

Here are some better shots taken shortly after they arrived...

The photos above were taken at maybe the second shed.  As you can see, the snake in the first photo was already gaining some black pigment in the rust colored area. Within 6 months the rust color was almost gone and they appeared almost normal, with just slight remnants of the rust colored scales remaining, which appears as rust tipping (as opposed to the normal yellow or white) in the black part of the pattern.   Obviously this was not what I was hoping to see, and the thought of crossing it with a Jaguar hadn't occured to me, so I decided to only raise two females up, and I sold the remaining snakes to a couple of friends.

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These next two photos are the female that produced my 2010 clutch. Their mother, the Diamond/Jungle cross, appears to be very similar, and the rust colored tipping was visible in the photo I had of her (looking for that photo - lots of pics on the hard drive and I have no idea what the file name is).

Up close, the rust colored tipping is there. Fortunately, this color is cleaned up and increased on the Jaguar version. Needless to say, we are hoping there is a homozygous co-dominant form or a "super", although the chances are probably remote.

Click HERE to visit my red phase coastal gallery and then let me know if you see anything like this over there. lol

 

 

 

 

 

 

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First Clutch
2010 was the first year I got good eggs from either of my two females. I got a clutch from each female  One clutch was completely infertile, the other hatched 11 babies (the remaining were slugs - bad year for that).   Out of those, there were five Jaguars - two rust colored Jaguars (one of which died before leaving the egg) and three normally pigmented Jaguars. Of the six non-Jaguars, I got three rust colored and three normally pigmented black ones.

The photo below was taken after the first shed. These particular snakes were produced by a pure coastal Jaguar (non-red) so they are 50% coastal. As you can see, the non-red babies in this clutch are very black and there aren't any in-between phases.  The black snakes look very similar to some unrelated DxJ Jaguar siblings I produced in 2006, and I think the amount of black pigment they show is a testament to the Diamond and Jungle lineage of their mother.  If there were enough coastal in her for the red to come through this strong, the black snakes would be more of a dark brown.

 

Below is a "rust colored" non-Jaguar at six months. This snake has not gained any black scales for several sheds and the remaining red will most likely stay with him into adulthood.  

Below is the surviving one of the two rust colored Jaguars (this is the same one pictured above as a hatchling) at six months.  This snake is why my interest has been piqued again.  It appears the rust color will be much more apparent in the Jaguar version, and it has also been lightened to a very pretty orange tone.  This snake is also much more yellow than the normally pigmented Jaguars in the clutch.

 

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