Possibilites With My Own Sand Boas

As I previously stated, i have four kenyan sand boas. With my current collection of Nuclear and Dodoma animals with snow recessive traits, there is great potential. Lets pair the Nuclear DH Snow to the normal. The nuclear is inherited the same way skin color would be, so all the babies would be "25% nuclear", because in order for him to be het snow, he would have to be paired with a non nuclear snow, which makes him 50%. Some would be brighter than others. The het to no het would make all of the babies 50% het albino, and 50% het anery. Many breeders would write this as 50% het snow, but thats really not the case. There would only really be a 25% chance that the baby would be het for both albino and anery, since you'd have to beat the 50% odds twice. So every baby would be a Nuclear Cross 25% het Snow. If i paired the snow dodoma cross, to the normal, every baby would be 12.5% Dodoma het Snow. This is because the male is the grandson of a pure dodoma or 100% dodoma, and his father was 50%. That makes him 25% dodoma, and his offspring 12.5. The babies would still look very nice, however, as his ancestors were paired with very nice animals. If the two Snow Dodoma Crosses were paired the babies would all be 25% Snow Dodoma crosses, just as their parents are. The most exciting pairing comes from the Nuclear DH Snow male to the Snow Dodoma Cross female. There are four possible phenotypes that could be produced by the litter, all including Nuclear and Dodoma. The combination is referred to as a Nuclear Meltdown, but because there isn't much Dodoma blood I would call it a Nuclear Meltdown Cross. So there would be NMD 100% het Snow, Anery NMD 100% het albino, Albino NMD 100% het anery (what I'm looking forward to the most), and finally Snow NMD. Definitely excited for the future!

Buy Smart

I own a very small collection of four kenyan sand boas, 2.2, or two males and two females. The males are a Nuclear DH Snow, and a Snow Dodoma Cross. The girls are one big normal girl, who happens to be my first snake ever, and another Snow Dodoma Cross. You can see I'm sticking to a sort of theme here, Snow with color and pattern enhancing blood. Its also nice to have my Nuclear as het for albino and anery, rather than visually express them. Reason being I'll get albinos, aneries and snows when i pair him to my snow girl. This brings me to my next point of buying smart. It would make absolutely no sense to go out and purchase and males right now. At this point, I only have one really nice girl, and two males, so i have to choose; so why would I go out and purchase a third male? Because I think its cute? Now if you keep sand boas strictly as pets and are 100% sure you'll never breed in the future, then by all means buy 20 males, but if there is even the slightest possibility you may want to in the future, invest in females early. They take over twice as long to mature so you'll have some time to think about it. If you have a ton of males and you decide you want to start breeding, unless you can find a nice adult female for sale (doubtful unless you want to spend half your lifes savings) you'll have to wait  two years for your babies to grow up. It also doesn't makes to have a solid program focusing on say, albinos, and go out and buy a paradox albino, because the two are not compatible. If you plan on starting a paradox program at some point in the future, however, then it may be a smart investment.

Possible Outcomes

A punnet square can be used to predict the outcomes of single gene pairings, but unless you want to get real elaborate with your squaring, a pencil and paper is the best way to discover the outcomes of more complex pairings. You can probably do simple recessive pairings in your head. If you pair a het anery to an albino het anery, you would get aneries 100% het albino, and normals het albino 66% het anery. The 66% ties back to a previous post about possible hets. Lets say you throw a stripe in there though, it gets a little saucier. Make the het anery a stripe het anery, which means, statistically, half your offspring would be stripes, and half would be tigers. Therefore you would have anery stripes 100% het albino, anery tigers 100% het albino, stripe het albinos 66% het anery, and tiger het albinos 66% anery. Heres one thats a little more difficult, lets say you pair a Paradox Snow, to an Albino Splash het anery. Think about that one in your head for a minute... It would be much easier to just write it out, and save you the chance of a mistake. Think about which genes make up each animal. Paradox Snow includes paradox albino and anery, two recessive genes. Albino splash het anery includes albino, splash and anery, even though it is not physically apparent. Which genes are compatible? Only ONE, anery. Paradox Albino and Albino are two completely different genes, and if you don't keep this in mind you could end up with a bunch of normal looking snakes. Since only one recessive trait is compatible, that means that its the only one that can be visually expressed. This leaves three other genes, that were originally visual, to be hets. The possible outcomes for this litter are, anery TH (triple het) albino, splash, albino paradox, and the other is a normal QH (quadruple het) albino, splash, paradox albino, anery. Even though you just paired two extremely high quality snakes, you ended up with a bunch of normals and aneries. This is why you have to be smart with your pairings, think of the outcomes before you throw your male in. You have to strategize and think of the future of your breeding program, or projects you want to work on; being careful can't hurt.

Numbers

Nobody wants to waste a few seconds of time writing out, " I have 3 male sand boas, 6 females, and 2 that im not sure of the sex." You could just write " I have 3.6.2 sand boas" These numbers are often used when describing collections, or a large group of snakes are being sold. For people who do not understand, this can be confusing. The first number represents the number of males, 1.0 would be one male. The second number represent females, 1.1 would be one male and one female. There does not have to be a third zero if there are no unsexed animals, but if there are, a third number must be added. So as an example, 2.6.1 would be two males, six females, and one unsexed. 2.6 would be 2 males and two females, but because there is no third number, there are no unsexed snakes.

The Glorious Punnet Square

If you find the whole genetics side of things daunting, a punnet square can be extremely beneficial. They are mainly used to help with predicting offspring and definetly simplifies all my ranting about recessive pairings. To create one for a single gene pairing, put four boxes together to create one big box. Represent the dominant genes with captital letters and recessive genes with lowercase letters. They must be in pairs of two, for example, an albino animal would be aa and a normal het albino would be Na. Do the same thing with the other animal on the left side, and then it becomes almost a sort of math problem. Think of it like a multiplication table at school. There should be one letter over each box, and one to the left of each box on the left. Put each letter in the boxes across of them on the left and below them from the top. The result is the babies that will be produced be the pairing, and the percent chance of them being produced. Each box is a 25% chance. This isnt very easy to explain, but the picture at the bottom should help. Let the capital A represent normal, and the lowercase a represent albino. The result is 25% normals, 50% normal het albinos, and 25% visual albinos, or NN, Na, Na, aa. 

Percentage Hets

These can often be confusing to people who've never bred animals or are new to the hobby. Percentage hets is basically the percent chance that an animal is heterozygous for a recessive gene. Holloway Herps has had 66% het Paints for sale for a few years, and recently the first paints that wernt produced by Jeff Holloway were born, a few of the litters were from those possible hets! Babies that are possible hets are produced from animals that are already het themselves. 66% hets are from het x het pairings, and 50% hets are from het x not hets. Het to het looks like this, we'll use albino as an example; Na x Na. You would get NN, Na, Na, aa. This means that 3/4 of the babies have normal phenotypes, but not all of them are heterozygous for albino. Two thirds, or 66% are, hence 66% het. Het x NotHet looks like NN x Na, meaning you would get NN and Na. All of the babies would have normal phenotypes, but only half would actually be het albino, hence 50% albino.

Rufescens

Rufescens pairings often confuse people. To me, they're very exciting, because the results are so variable. Statistically, if you breed a rufescens to a normal, half of the offspring will be stripes and half will be tigers. There are some in between that look like brown snakes with orange flecks and dashes, and theyre often called rufescens crosses. Stripes are pretty self explanatory, theyre brownish black with an orange stripe running from their head to their tail. Tigers, however, appear to be normal. A few features tigers may have would be darker spotting and horizaontalish barring, hence tiger. The only reason tigers really exist and stand apart from normals is the symbolize the presence of rufescens blood. Though stripes seem far closer in relation to pure rufescens animals, you could have a stripe that is 25% rufescens and a tiger that is 75%. This also connects back to trusting your breeder. You can have a stripe that looks very much like a pure ruf, with almost no orange at all and have it sold to you for twice its worth, only to end up with a litter of stripes and tigers when you pair it to a true ruf. To me, it makes far more sense to invest in male stripes as opposed to females. You can pair a male to multiple females and have multiple stripe litters where as a female's striped genes can only passed on once a year. Striped combos are destined for greatness, and Splash Stripes should be produced next year, if not within a few months. Im not sure how apparent a stripe would be when combined with the paint gene, as paints already have a very nice stripe of their own.

Dodoma

Dodoma sand boas are gorgeous. They tend to stay much cleaner and have a more reduced pattern with very circular blotches and even a patternless head. Hailing from the Dodoma Valley in Tanzania, these beauties have been plugged in with several different morphs with outstanding results. Perhaps the most successful pairing has been with the already outstanding deep deep orange of the nuclear sand boas. Nuclears were line bred by Roy Stockwell of Canada for over twenty years to be the deepest orange with the cleanest patterns, even into adulthood. The combination of these two is called a Nuclear Meltdown which has the best of both worlds. Deep orange, reduced pattern, circular blotches and a very clear and clean pattern. Brian Russo has a NuclearMeltdown male that is also heterozygous for albino and anery, or snow, that throws absolutely amazing babies. The dodomas can often prove to be tricky feeders especially when introduced to new environments. The genetics behind the animals cannot be described as a morph but a locality. The pairing of dodoma and normal sand boas could be compared to two people of different ethnicities having children. The kids wouldnt be one or another, but a mix, in the snakes cases these would be called dodoma crosses or 50% dodoma. 

Splash

The splash gene is my personal favorite. Its pretty similar to a pied ball python, but most of the affected area is near the tail. The way it interacts with other morphs i stunning, particularly in albino snakes. The area of splash is often a perfect crisp white, similar once again to the pied morph in ball pythons. It is also commonly paired with snow and anery sand boas, but with a base color similar to white to begin with, the splash isnt quite as dramatic. These are also becoming more and more affordable as more people begin to breed them. With some luck I'll be one of them in the future. Im excited to see how the albino splash combo pairs with the nuclear color. That orange screams on nuclear albinos and the contrast of the white will probably bring a tear to my eye. I am aware of several breeders already beginning to work towards this combo, so it shouldn't be too long before we're all crying over them. The splash gene is simple recessive so it's inherited the  same way albino and anery is and it also means that it will hold its value a little longer because its not as easy to produce. 

The Tail WIggle

One of my little snows is about as vicious as a sand boa can get, which isnt that vicious, but even still it seems she enjoys biting me. Recently, however, i havnt been getting bitten as much because she's predictable. Normally its almost impossible to tell when a sand boa will bite you because they generally strike side to side, which requires no recoil to bite. You can tell when most snakes will attempt to bite you because they bunch up like an s and spring forward. The little girl is predictable because every time she gets ready to bite me her tail starts to wiggle back and forth like a dog wagging its tail. I thought it was funny at first but it got me thinking about other animals that bait in prey, like angler fish and snapping turtles. I believe that a larger species of sand boa, the indian sand boa, commonly displays this behavior when threatened. Adults of the species usually retain a few of their juvenile rings at the base of their tail to make this effect even more confusing. Who knows, maybe my girl's just playing.

Variation Within Genes

No two snakes are the same, though they be be the same morph or have the same type of pattern; it's almost like they have their own fingerprint. Albinos have an extremely wide range of color alone, from pink to yellow to peach blotches, and varying shades of orange. The albino mutation itself is a lack of color though, so how could these snakes be so different if they're all lacking color. It couldn't be that they're all different mutations, because they wouldn't be compatible, which they all are. The variation of color occurs in anery as well, with black and white varying to more brown and cream. This, in my opinion makes it all the more exciting, with more possibilities and higher expectations for the future of sand boas.

Sandboasomes

Heres a little reproduction background. Females gametes aka eggs are haploids, meaning they only have 23 chromosomes. All of these have 22 autosomes which determine which genes are inherited and one X. Now gametes are not like normal cells, most cells contain 46 chromosomes, a pair of the 23. We all know that when the sperm reaches the egg a zygote is formed a baby grows and pops out after 9 months blah blah blah. In humans the way sex is determined is 100% dependent on the males. The sperm either have a Y chromosome or an X chromosome, its 50/50. If a sperm with the Y reaches the egg a boy develops, if X, a girl. The combination of both 23 (haploids) create the full 46 (diploid) I'm not sure how sex is determined in sand boas, but based on a 1970 study of boid karyotypes (chromosome pictures) it was determined that the kenyan sand boas close relative, the javelin sand boa has 34 total chromosomes but they are not arranged the same as humans. They have 16 macrochromosomes and 18 microchromosomes. To be perfectly honest i do not know what the significance of this is, but it does not appear to mention any of these chromosomes determining sex, though I'm sure they do. Sand boas karyotype is unique among boas as they have two less than the usual amount of micro chromosomes, and their macrochromosomes include 8 metacentric and 8 acrocentric chromosomes, as opposed to the usual 10 and 6. Metacentric chromosomes have the typical X shape with the four armish things, where as acrocentric chromosomes are more of a half X. If thats confusing there's a picture below.

Know What You're Getting

I cannot stress the importance of purchasing your snakes from a reputable breeder enough. My very first snake was a normal female kenyan sand boa. I got it from pet shop in Kansas City and I absolutely adored her. She was sold to me as a "100% Egyptian"; at the time I didn't realize the significance of this, as pure egyptian sand boas are hard to come by. Only now am I realizing that only a couple of people work with them in the entire county, and they don't sell for fifty dollars either. This is why its important that you find a breeder you can trust. Imagine putting down a thousand dollars on a "Het Paint" only to find out you just bought a normal sand boa for twenty times its actual worth. The breeders you can trust are generally the breeders who produce the highest quality animals as well, which definitely wouldn't hurt, especially if you plan on breeding in the future. A few breeders I 'm a fan of are Jeff Holloway, Brian Russo, Scott Miller, Mark Bpp, Mark Huntely, Warren Treacher, Lee Frey and Steven Stephenson. All of them produce great animals.

Inheritable Paradox?

Paradoxes in pattern are very rare. These are blotches or spots of irregularity, different from the rest of the pattern. Now normally these are not able to be passed on to offspring, they just look cool. In sand boas, the albino paradox gene  is in fact inheritable; it's just simple recessive. The morph looks like an albino snake, but with jet black blotches all. These snakes have been selectively bred to have more and more black however, and the recently produced Albino Paradox Stripe tend to have black all over them. This could be because of the presence of rufescens blood, but only time will tell. Paradox Albinos are not the only form of paradoxing that occurs in these snakes. Brother Boa's produced an anery snake, which is normal black and white, that had oranges flecks on it. I believe they have produced more than one, so hopefully it proves to be recessive! I also believe that Sand Boa Morphs have produced a snake with a normal phenotype, but with a small spot of white within the pattern. I am only aware of the one however. It should be interesting to see how the Paradox gene blends with other genes after seeing how it reacted with the stripe. Nothing too major occurred when mixed with the anery gene, just a snow with black blotches. I am anxious to see how it will do with the splash gene, as many albino snakes have a solid white tail because of the gene. Will the paradoxing extend to the splash itself? That would be one killer snake! 

Hypo

In the post below, you can see a very pretty example of a snow kenyan sand boa. What I want to see, however is how the hypo gene affects it. Hypo is short for "Hypomelanistic". Basically what it means is less color, but it doesn't always appear that way. The albino, anery, hypo combination is fairly common in another species of boa, the red tailed boa. The combination of the three is called a moonglow. These animals are a stunning white, and as their name suggests, they seem to glow. Will the hypo gene affect sand boas the same way though? I am aware that hypo snows have been produced by Scott Miller, but have never seen one. The odds of moonglow sand boas looking like their larger cousins look good, however, as the albino hypo, or sunglow, sand boas look fairly similar. As far as I know, there are several hypo "lines" of sand boas but only one that has proven to be inheritable; Scott Miller's.

A Few of My Personal Sand Boas

Female Snow Dodoma Cross from Brian Russo at Russo's Reptiles

Nuclear Double Het Snow Male from Mark and Jennifer Huntley at Sand Boa Morphs

Why Recessive Genes are Recessive

Kenyan Sand Boas have adapted to their arid desert environment for thousands of years, changing in reaction to the equally changing environment. Therefore, the normal, or wild type sand boas would be the best suited to thrive in the wild. This is the answer to why recessive genes are recessive. The genes are designed to be best for survival not asthetic appeal, because a black and white anerythristic sand boa is a lot easier to find for a hungry predator. Mutations happen all the time in the wild, but with the odds of a well adapted sand boa surviving to adulthood slim, the odds of a snake that has no camoflauge surviving is near zero. Most mutations in the pet trade now occur with very large scale breeders who can keep the animals out of harms way, but occasionally imports are brought in, an example of that would be the Paint morph in sand boa, with Jeff Holloway ending up with the first import and proving it to be recessive.

Combining Genes

All living things are a combination of genes. Some genes affect very minute things, say the thickness of hair, where others determine whether or not you get cancer. Humans have targeted certain genes and selectively bred to make them even better. This applies to sand boas as well. Roy Stockwell selectively bred high orange kenyans for decades before the nuclear line was established. Breeders also combine multiple genes to create stunning animals.The genes are all individual so they can layer over one another and actually combine effects. Lets use an albino stripe as an example. The rufescens of the stripe affects only the pattern of the snake, which does not interfere with the melanin reduction of albinism. The result is an albino snake with a striped pattern. My own little project includes pairing a Nuclear that is heterozygous or het for both albino and anery, aka snow, to a Snow Female that also has blood from a sand boa locality found in the Dodoma Valley of Tanzania. The short version of this would be Nuclear DH Snow x Snow Dodoma Cross. The snow itself is not what is significant about this pairing, it is the combination of the Nuclear and Dodoma blood. The result is a snake known a Nuclear Meltdown. Nuclear Meltdowns have even the orange and contrast of the Nuclears and the sharpness and blushing of the Dodomas. It is a sight to behold. Not only would The snake posses a sort of Nuclear Meltdown coloring, the pairing will potentially produce aneries, albinos and snows. Similar animals have been produced by Brian Russo and should be produced again this coming winter. They are an amazing example of what happens when you understand how certain genes affect others.

Morph List and Possibilities

Most people don't begin to keep and breed sand boas to enjoy the science side of things. They want to appreciate the beauty of the snakes and be able to hold and care for the living art they work so hard to keep happy. Most of the time, keepers catch reptile fever and end up with a hoard, and with all the morphs and mutations out on the market today the possibilities are nearly infinite! Here's a quick list of a few...

Recessive-

Albino

Anery

Albino Paradox

Hypo

Splash

Paint

LineBred-

Nuclear 

Locality-

Dodoma

Flame

Rufescens is kind of its own little thing. If you breed a Ruf to a normal you would get a bunch of stripes and tigers. However you could not breed two stripes to one another and produce a 100% Rufescens animal. You can, however, breed a stripe to a normal and produce stripes. The farther you get from the original Rufescens blood, the less of a chance there is for a stripe to be in the litter. This topic is one I want to get into more detail on in the future.

 I know i forgot Tiger but I'm not sure where that fits in to it all. Tiger really isnt much of a morph, most look like normals. I see the Tiger morph almost like a marker, just to signify that there is a certain percentage of rufescens in a snake, because you cant breed two tigers back to get a stripe phenotype, you'd just end up with a bunch of normal looking boas.

Now many of these morphs have already been combined and in high volume. The snow morph is a combination of both the albino and anery morphs (Anerythristic is a lack of red pigmentation) and is now fairly common and inexpensive. Paradox Albinos, which are a completely different gene than regular albinos have also been coupled with the anery gene to create paradox snows. Several new morphs that have surfaced fairly recently include the Paint gene, which was proven out under Jeff Holloway of Holloway Herps. Those snakes are smokin'! The possibilities really are endless with all thats available. My personal favorite is the addition of the line bred beauty of the Nuclears from Roy Stockwell in Canada into any morph. It adds serious contrast and color that only gets richer! Just imagine a Nuclear Albino Paint! Someone will do it eventually, and we'll be waiting.

Recessive Genes

There are several "base morphs" in Kenyan Sand Boas. Base morphs are mutations that have been found to exist in the species and have proven to be genetically inheritable. One of the most common morphs found throughout the reptile community is albinism. Albinism is a mutation that causes a lack of  melanin production and thus, reduced pigmentation. The melanin gives the snakes the normal orange and black coloration, and without it it, the snakes saddles become a yellow/pink sort of color but keep the vibrant orange. This gene is what is called recessive. A recessive gene is a gene that can be overshadowed by a dominant gene visually, but keeps the genetic potential. The visual appearance is what is called the phenotype and the genetic makeup is called the genotype. A snake that looks normal has a normal phenotype, and a snake that looks albino has an albino phenotype. Normal is dominant, while as previously stated, albino is recessive. This means that if a normal sand boa were bred to an albino, you could not visually see the albino in the babies. This is because the normal gene overshadows the albino gene. The genotype however is not normal. It would be considered heterozygous. If a normal snake is homozygous normal, it would mean that it was purely normal or "NN." This means that it would carry no recessive genes. Basically what you see is what you get. Heterozygous animals appear to be normal but they carry a gene not expressed in the phenotype. "Na" for example. Now for the albino gene to be expressed, the snake would have to be homozygous albino, or "aa". The reason being that there is no dominant gene to overshadow it. However, you could produce an albino phenotype by breeding two normal phenotypes. The way this is done is by breeding two snakes that carry the albino gene, aka heterozygous genotype with a normal genotype. This would be represented by Na x Na which could produces normal or albino phenotypes. So if you see a snake advertised as Normal het Albino, that means that the animal has a normal phenotype but is heterozygous and carries the albino gene, but because it is recessive, it cannot be visually observed. ALL albinos are homozygously albino, because if it carried the normal gene, it wouldn't allow for the albino phenotype to be expressed.