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Posted by Chris H. on July 21, 2002 at 12:01:33:
In Reply to: o.k. guys this is my whole entire take on the hypo morphs... posted by shannon brown on July 21, 2002 at 01:38:22:
Shannon,
First of all, excellent rant. I too think that the ease with which people name morphs is getting pathological in this hobby (look at Ball Pythons!).
I think the terms hypo and hyper are thrown around to the point that they have lost any meaning in the hobby. Why? Of course, because people are greedy (these babies are hypo, they are worth twice as much). And it is easy to do because the terms have little quantifiable meaning, they just mean "more" or "less" than normal.
It would be much more useful if people described the snakes as a "narrow-black band morph" or some similar description. Of course, then we would be complaining about how narrow the bands have to be to be a "pinstripe".
But I caution you against the use of the phrase t+ albino. Unlike hypo (which just implies less than usual), t+ and t- albinism have very specific meanings.
I believe the "T" refers to the enzyme tyrosinase, which is needed to produce the pigment melanin. Animals that lack this enzyme are t-, and don't produce any melanin. They are truly albino.
The t+ albinos are also supposed to be amelanistic, but they have the enzyme tyrosinase, but are amelanistic because some other part of the melanin production pathway is inhibited/missing. But they are amelanistic.
My issue is that for most of the t+/t- designations, I don't think we really have a clue about the presence or absence of tyrosinase. People give snakes these very specific designations based on their similarities to other snakes which have had the designations given to them by other people. Polar Bears and white mice are both white mammals. But they are not white for the same reason (white mice are albino, polar bears are not).
So lets try to avoid throwing around the labels t+ and t- without any data to support them. At least throwing around the label hypomelanistic isn't wrong (the snakes do have less melanin than "normal" - we may not have a clue why, but we can observe that they do).
Ten or twelve years ago, before the appearance of morphs in Hondurans, a friend of mine bred Hondurans and his original pair was very dark. The babies started off pretty, but the amount of black stippling that appeared as the snakes matured made them relatively unattractive. We used to joke that he had the "hypermelanistic" morph. Now that is no longer funny because some moron would sell them as such!
(BTW - this is not harmless fun. The naming of every other ball python as a morph has made the wild collection of ball pythons more profitable, and more likely to continue. I'm sure those snake collectors in Ghana laugh all the way to the bank about our "infatuation" with otherwise normal variation in these snakes!).
