Has it been done successfully yet? I know that Henry Piorun produced a leucistic albino when he bred a jaguar carpet python to another jaguar carpet and they were het albinos. His luecistic albino is a little wonky but it's doing ok now. As far as I know, any jag x jag crosses that resulted in leucistics, have seen them either die in the egg or last no more than 24 hrs. So is this is lethal combo or has it been done successfully yet? Other question is in regards to jags - I often hear people say that they can have neurological problems and be a little "weird" or "retarded". So how common is it for jags to display this wonkiness?
?2011-12-26T00:59:39Z
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Hi Rebecca, I've always liked your answers, and now a very good question :) I saw videos of that snake henry produced, I don't think it was a super jag (a leucy), I think one parent was het albino, and the other was a jag from what I heard, though now I'm gonna have to look for it again. It was a het albino jag, with some kind of weird paradox. Noone has yet to produce a leucistic carpet, (a super jag) that has lived. their lungs fail to develop. I'm saying this assuming you understand how a co-dominant/incomplete dominant trait works. All normal jags I own or have seen, are at least a bit, odd. Lets say that most of these snakes would have a difficult time in the wild. It varies strongly, and can change drastically in an individual over the course if its life. Stress seems to play a part, but not always.
The "wonkiness" comes from the fact that that the distribution of melanin is tied somehow to the neural crest cells, and the part of the jaguar mutation that reduces the pattern also changes the amount &/or functionality of these neural crest cells. That is with a normal jag, heterozygous for jaguar. The leucistic, or super jag, or homozygous for jaguar, so far is a fatal morph. I believe the spider in balls is similar, and the motley in boas, though those can live for a bit sometimes. The amount of wonkiness (I like that word:) varies as I said, from just off normal, to severe nuero issues resembling ibd like symptoms of being unable to right itself, etc... These snakes can still feed, breed, and thrive in captivity. You should drop by the board sometime, there are some very knowledgeable people there, and you can read allot of threads going back years almost to the introduction of the jag gene.