Ssthisto WalkingDeath DancingLight ([info]ssthisto) wrote,
@ 2005-05-03 11:00:00
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New egg!
But, oddly enough, just a singleton.

And it looks like it might just be fertile, too....

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-03 11:18 am UTC (link)
What will the baby look like?

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 01:31 pm UTC (link)
Well, it's the baby of an albino female and a patternless male; as far as I know, the albino female doesn't carry patternless and the patternless male doesn't carry albino... so I'm expecting her to look like a 'normal' wild type yellow-and-black spotted gecko who carries both recessive genes.

If it comes out looking like anything else, I'll be surprised - it means that one or the other of them is 'hiding' a recessive gene I don't know about.

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-03 01:48 pm UTC (link)
So it's like Christmas in April, waiting to find out what the little one will look like :p

You've been quiet recently. You ok?

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 03:00 pm UTC (link)
Busy, tired. Still waiting on e-mail, too *grins*

And it'll probably be two months before the egg hatches (because I'm incubating low-temperature to get a female), so more like Christmas in July to find out what she'll be like. I do think she'll wind up looking normal, though. Maybe at the outside she might look 'hypo' with fewer black spots than normal, but that's a hunch.

When I have a few double het babies grown up and old enough to breed, -that- will be when it gets interesting - because I could potentially get normal-looking babies, albino babies, patternless babies and possibly even patternless albino babies.

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-03 03:14 pm UTC (link)
::grins:: Sounds fun.

Are all reptiles' genders determined by temperature?

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 03:18 pm UTC (link)
Nope, not all of them. Most of the geckos are, as are crocodiles; I think snakes are mostly determined via chromosomes, not temps; there's some evidence that certain monitor species may have 'socially' determined sex - anecdotally people have said that if you buy two hatchlings, you wind up with a pair, if you buy three you wind up with a male and two females... though that hasn't been proven 100% yet.

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-03 03:22 pm UTC (link)
Interesting. Reptiles are truly awesome, aren't they?

Hmm, I could save up money for those snakes, and if I still want them when I have enough cash... though Jev would have a fit if I got another pet without telling him ::grin::

Tee, I started drama on VHR o-O

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 03:51 pm UTC (link)
Reptiles, in one form or another, will outlive mammals as a class. They're much more successful at small sizes than any other vertebrate type - hardy little beggars who can survive on minimal energy input.

That said, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get myself a -male- double het gecko, because I only have one incubator. Suppose I'll have to set up a plastic aquarium-and-heat-mat jobbie at some point, just for hatching out males. Either that, or see if I can buy one from a breeder at some point and just incubate all of mine for female.

I think Jev would have a fit if he came home one day and you were setting up a four-foot-long piece of furniture with lights and all *grins* never mind putting the snakes in it!

Oh, TEH DRAMA!

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-03 03:56 pm UTC (link)
::grins:: I think if I did sneak some snakes into the house, he'd put up with it. Though I wouldn't be able to open the curtains any more if I did.


Ok, it wasn't terribly dramatic, I just made myself look like a fool :P

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 03:58 pm UTC (link)
It won't be the first or the last time someone has. Certainly *I* have done it before, made myself look unspeakably silly....

Depends on where in the flat you kept the snakes, doesn't it, whether you could have the curtains open? I wouldn't keep them in a place where they'd get direct sunlight from an open curtain anyway, just because they might overheat in a viv designed to keep heat in.

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-03 04:06 pm UTC (link)
The only place they could go would be the kitchen or the living room, both of which have bay windows which I like to have the curtains open. There's no room in the bedroom for them. There is a spot at the end of the hall that *might* be big enough, but it's close to the front door, and while no one from the rental agency or the landlord himself has ever been to the flat since we moved in, it'd be just my luck that someone would show up if I put a cage or something down there and we'd get in trouble/kicked out of flat/forced to get rid of pets.

Hrm. I keep looking online at house prices/rent prices, and there's still nothing we could afford. If we had a house with just one more room, or two living rooms or something, it wouldn't be a problem (especially if we owned it).

I am feeling *really* jealous of my sister in law who bought a house about 5 years ago for 30,000 pounds, which is now valued at around 60,000 or more (I think she said). We couldn't even buy the thing off her if she decided to sell.

Well, for that matter, I am insanely jealous of anyone who owns a house at the moment. Yeah, I'm feeling like a brat right now.

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 04:14 pm UTC (link)
Well, *I* could keep your snakes for you until you got a place where you could keep 'em? I've got room for a 4-foot viv -somewhere- around here, really! Honest! I'm sure I could move some of the stuff out of the kitchen cupboards or something - we don't need those cabinets for foodstuffs anyway!

Are you pretty sure you want to stay in the Nottingham area? I know that house prices 'up here' - even as far south as Sheffield - aren't that bad, nor are rent prices - but then again, it's a pain in the ass to move no matter where you go. House prices have rocketed in the last five years - we got our first house for 45K in 2000, sold for 65K, bought this one for 69K in 2002 and might be able to get well over 100K for it... which profit would all get glomped up by paying off debts.

Have you ever asked your landlord if you could pay a pet deposit or something in order to be able to keep an animal? Especially on a pet that stays in a closed cage and won't be able to get out and mess on the carpet/scratch the walls/have food that attracts vermin?

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-03 04:25 pm UTC (link)
::grins:: Careful, I might take you up on that offer :p (I've love to see what a butter corn x crimson cross would look like.. shoot, I could breed my own morphs!).

I don't personally want to stay in Nottingham- I'd rather move somewhere that's less crowded, less noisy, and less smelly/polluted. I'm not sure that Jev would want to move to the Leeds area since he has a *lot* of family there that he thinks would pester the crap out of us. (His family is *very* friendly/visit-ish/must go see people if we're in the area type, we'd never get away with not visiting his grandfather every weekend if we lived in the are. That's kind of a sucky attitude, and a silly reason not to move to a certain area of the country, but ehh..)

Frankly, I'm not terribly bothered where I live as long as it's decent, has some green stuff on the ground rather than concrete, and isn't overly crowded.

Unfortunately, we've not got a cent of savings between us. Ok, I lie, we have about 45 pounds in savings :p

I've not thought of giving them a deposit. About 6 months or longer after we'd moved in, when I already had the rats and didn't tell them, I called on the phone to ask if it would be ok to get a pet. (The contract says "no pets without landlord's permission" so I thought that calling afterword might get me somewhere.) The immediate and firm answer was none. Not a dog, cat, hamster, not even a goldfish in a bowl. Absolutely *no* pets allowed.

I could call and ask if they could ask the landlord for me if I could have a "small caged reptile, like a gecko" :p if I paid an extra deposit. We've already paid 300 pounds deposit as it is, though, which I'm confident we won't get back when we leave (the landlord is damn stingy about repairs to the flat, I'd be really surprised if we got our deposit back because I can easily see him finding things around the flat to blame on us, etc).

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-04 03:38 pm UTC (link)
ButterXCrimson... hmmm...
Butter is a double recessive Amelanistic (no black) plus Caramel (Reduced red, but black markings normally present).
Crimson is a single-recessive Hypomelanistic (Reduced black) selected for certain patterns and colours.

So, you'd for certain get babies that carry (but do not show) Amelanistic, Caramel and Hypomelanistic traits... and if their parents aren't hiding any recessive single genes, your babies would come out looking like... well... normal wild-type corn snakes. They'd be called 'triple het Amel/Caramel/Hypo' but they'd still look like normals.

A second generation breeding siblings from the same parents together would have the possibility of producing normals, normals carrying any of the three recessives (and you wouldn't be able to tell any of them apart), hypomelanistics showing reduced black, amelanistics with no black, Crimsons, Butters, hypomelanistic caramels (called Ambers in the trade), Caramels .... at least seven specific 'visual' phenotypes.

And that's only if your pair don't carry any other recessive genes.


If you lived in Sheffield, Manchester or Huddersfield, you'd still be a substantial way away from your in-laws in Leeds...

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-04 03:47 pm UTC (link)
Aww, and I was hoping I might get some really interesting things, like a crimson red with butter yellow splodges or something. You can tell my knowledge in genetics is seriously lacking.

What about a crimson x blizzard? I was wanting the blizzard to be male. I'm still keen on lavender, though, as well. Any suggestions on what types would make the most interesting babies?

I don't know much about those places, though as long as they're decent areas, i wouldn't mind so much. We'd have to work out what it'd cost us to move, at any rate, and save up. We're certainly not going to be in any position to move in the next six months at the very earliest.

We've considered asking his parents if we could move into their top floor in Wales until we got jobs and could rent or buy our own place around Harlech/Tywyn/etc, basically anywhere int he Gwynedd area.

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-04 04:10 pm UTC (link)
CrimsonXBlizzard...

Well, Crimson is hypomelanistic. Blizzard is the combination of 'Charcoal' (no red, type 2) and Amelanistic (no black).

So your first generation would, again, be triple-het 'normals' assuming that neither snake carried any hidden recessives. Second-generation snakes could be Blizzard, Crimson, Charcoal, Amelanistic, Ghost... some things I'm reading say that Crimson may also include Lavender as well as being hypo, so you could possibly get second-generation Lavenders, Hypo Lavenders and even Opals.

I figured that if I wanted the most interesting first-generation babies (in my opinion) and was limited to a breeding trio (1.2)... and had enough money for the snakes I wanted then I'd be best getting:

Blizzard male (Charcoal with Amelanistic, visually solid white)
Butter female (Amelanistic with Caramel, visually patterned yellow)
Pewter female (Charcoal with Bloodred, visually white-bellied speckled grey)

From that I would get 100% Amelanistic (red, yellow and orange, no black) babies out of the Butter female, which would -carry- the Charcoal and Caramel traits (double het). I would get 100% Charcoal (shades of grey and yellow) babies out of the Pewter female which would -carry- the Bloodred and Amelanistic traits.

And if I bred babies from those clutches I could get
Totally normal wild-types - which could be het for everything or nothing
Single-recessive: Amelanistics, Charcoals, Bloodreds and Caramels
Double-recessive: Blizzards, Butters, Pewters, Amelanistic Bloodreds, Charcoal/Caramels (unnamed morph - might be something LIKE a butter), and Bloodred/Caramels (unnamed morph - might be a solid golden-brown snake)
Triple-recessive: Blizzard-Bloodreds (even cleaner white and less patterned than the best Blizzards), Butter-Bloodreds (Possibly a solid lemon-yellow snake - this doesn't exist yet to my knowledge) ....

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-04 04:11 pm UTC (link)
I know Manchester's very good for computing-related jobs, and the public transport is pretty good too.

I've heard, though, that Wales is exceptionally expensive to live in.

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-04 04:12 pm UTC (link)
You might find this interesting:

http://www.csftp.co.uk/morphstandard.htm

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[info]sadescha
2005-05-04 10:49 am UTC (link)
I called the renting agency about pets- nope. They don't even stop to consider, it's just a flat out nope, not allowed, no pets at all, nothing.

Sod that idea, then.

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[info]jalen_dragon
2005-05-03 03:49 pm UTC (link)
Oooh... wish I could switch around like that as situaiton demanded. :P

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 03:56 pm UTC (link)
Though adult Acanthurus monitors do -not- change gender - it's only groups kept together as hatchlings that 'sort' themselves that way. If it does happen, scientifically speaking, it's probably that the largest, fastest-growing individual in a clutch is the one that becomes male, and then pheromonally or hormonally 'bullies' the others into being female. Once they have an established gender, though, that's it.

I find the parthenogenetic New Mexico Whiptail more interesting - every single member of the species is female. 'Pairs' get together and go through the motions of mating, then both individuals go off to lay eggs that are clones of themselves. Bizarrely, though, if they can't 'mate' they don't produce eggs - they're hardwired to require that kind of stimulus.

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[info]jalen_dragon
2005-05-03 03:49 pm UTC (link)
Cool beans! Congrats, Ssthisto dear! (And to the gecko)

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-03 03:52 pm UTC (link)
No congrats yet - not until I've incubated it for a couple of weeks and can verify it's not another 'blank' like the last four.

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[info]mandarax85
2005-05-03 05:36 pm UTC (link)
How do you tell?

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[info]ssthisto
2005-05-04 04:46 am UTC (link)
After about two weeks, very carefully pick the egg up (making sure you keep it the same way up as when it was laid, because if you roll it, the embryo will die) and lay it in your hand, between the bases of two fingers. When you shine a light up through the egg, a 'blank' infertile egg will appear to be clear yellow all the way through. A fertile egg with a chance of hatching will have a pink or red splotch in it - and eventually will appear pink all the way through.

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