# Albino BHP



## Bl69aze (Jul 12, 2018)

IS this real? Is it a first?

Looks super weird might aswell not be a bhp but a whp haha


----------



## Shire pythons (Jul 12, 2018)

Definetely not a first i know that much not sure of any in aussie collections as of yet but a European guy has been breeding them for a while now . Cant remember his name off the top of my head though
[doublepost=1531367991,1531367934][/doublepost]Edit that .. peit nuyten


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Jul 12, 2018)

Its a first for Paul @ UK Pythons and may well be the first in the UK.
Certainly been in Europe for a few years as mentioned above, first bred by Piet


----------



## Mick666 (Jul 17, 2018)

nice.


----------



## Stompsy (Jul 17, 2018)

I think they're ugly....


----------



## Bl69aze (Jul 17, 2018)

Stompsy said:


> I think they're ugly....


me too


----------



## Southernserpent (Jul 17, 2018)

Love their pattern's


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Jul 17, 2018)

Stompsy said:


> I think they're ugly....





Bl69aze said:


> me too



Thats ok, I can have your share


----------



## Stompsy (Jul 17, 2018)

Pauls_Pythons said:


> Thats ok, I can have your share


Go for your life!


----------



## Mick666 (Jul 17, 2018)

I wonder how long until they magically appear in Australia.


----------



## Sdaji (Jul 17, 2018)

Mick666 said:


> I wonder how long until they magically appear in Australia.



Quite a few years ago. I was offered a pair for $90k back in... at least 6-7 years ago. Of course, they would have died before maturing and I wasn't stupid enough to buy them.

Surprising how little people know about these.


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Jul 17, 2018)

They are out there and plenty of people have already lost money buying animals that were advertised as 'hets'.
In fact I remember an ad on this site trying to sell hets also around that 6-7 years ago mark.


----------



## Shire pythons (Jul 17, 2018)

Sdaji said:


> Quite a few years ago. I was offered a pair for $90k back in... at least 6-7 years ago. Of course, they would have died before maturing and I wasn't stupid enough to buy them.
> 
> Surprising how little people know about these.


Admittedly i know very little about this morph and am curious as to why they would die before maturity ?
Cheers
[doublepost=1531815445,1531815383][/doublepost]Also are there some in oz ?


----------



## Stompsy (Jul 17, 2018)

Shire pythons said:


> Admittedly i know very little about this morph and am curious as to why they would die before maturity ?
> Cheers
> [doublepost=1531815445,1531815383][/doublepost]Also are there some in oz ?


I’m also curious....


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Jul 17, 2018)

Weak genetics Im guessing. Similar to the early days of the Albino Spotted.


----------



## Shire pythons (Jul 17, 2018)

Pauls_Pythons said:


> Weak genetics Im guessing


Yeah i kind of figured that. I dont knowtoo much on the weak genetics side of things but was under the impression new genetically faulty morphs generally only survive a matter of days or weeks or live on with kinks and or are very hard to breed later on . @Sdaji can you shed some light on the albino bhps ?


----------



## Bl69aze (Jul 17, 2018)

Would the cause be the same reason that leucistic gene is fatal?


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Jul 17, 2018)

Sdaji will explain better than I but with the Albino Spotteds I believe that many of the hatclings were dead in the egg, (full term in many cases) or shortly after hatching. Some did survive but it was very few. They were grown on and outcrossed to strengthen the genetics.

In the early Albino Olive days almost all the albino's came from het pairings as albino x albino was creating similar problems. 

Not heard anything about the early days of the albino darwins though.


----------



## Bl69aze (Jul 17, 2018)

Pauls_Pythons said:


> Sdaji will explain better than I but with the Albino Spotteds I believe that many of the hatclings were dead in the egg, (full term in many cases) or shortly after hatching. Some did survive but it was very few. They were grown on and outcrossed to strengthen the genetics.
> 
> In the early Albino Olive days almost all the albino's came from het pairings as albino x albino was creating similar problems.
> 
> Not heard anything about the early days of the albino darwins though.


As far as I’m aware from he said she said, a high(90+) % of the first het alb Darwin’s survived (not sure whether it came down to the breeders skill or what) from blondie.


----------



## Sdaji (Jul 18, 2018)

Pauls_Pythons said:


> Weak genetics Im guessing. Similar to the early days of the Albino Spotted.



Haha, you say that like there has been any change 

Neither they nor the Olives have ever changed. The Olives were never all that bad, but as bad as they were, they still are. The 'spotteds' (which aren't really spotteds) will always have the same problems, and outcrossing will never help improve them, neither will it ever improve the Olives. Outcrossing helps to strengthen bad lines. These morphs are single mutations, not lines. They can not be 'fixed' or helped by outcrossing. If outcrossing is going to help, it helps in the first generation and does nothing from there, but it's a completely different concept from anything relevant to these mutations. If you're interested in learning about this, a good first point would be to learn the difference between a line and a mutation.

The albino 'Darwins' (Darwin Carpets) had no noteworthy problems from the start. I remember having the original albino around my neck while looking at the babies shortly before they were openly sold for the first time. If there had been problems back then, they'd still be around now. That original group had a few noteworthy traits like being calm for Darwin Carpets, but that doesn't appear to have been related to the mutation itself as far as I know.

Single gene mutations are what they are. You can't change them. Of the four albino snakes openly established in the hobby, two (the carpets and my adder mutation) are pretty much without problems, the Olives have minor issues, the Antaresia have major issues. Nothing will ever change that, similar to no amount of outcrossing being even relevant to reducing neuro in jags or making the superjags survive. Outcrossing just isn't relevant when working with a mutation.

It's amazing how many ridiculous lies there are, how little sense they make (admittedly, non geneticists wouldn't understand that they don't make sense), and how widely believed they are.


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Jul 18, 2018)

Sdaji said:


> Neither they nor the Olives have ever changed. The Olives were never all that bad, but as bad as they were, they still are. The 'spotteds' (which aren't really spotteds) will always have the same problems, and outcrossing will never help improve them, neither will it ever improve the Olives.



Im hearing what you are saying and I know your genetics background but I dont understand how if this is correct that we now regularly see more and more of these 2 albino lines being bred with little to no loss during or shortly after hatching. (Or are breeders not having the success that they claim and are just breeding from an increasing number of stock animals?)

I remember the first 3 seasons or so people were breeding the albino mac's (or trying at least) and almost all the young that hatched died within a maximum period of 3-4 months. Now we see them for sale on a regular basis and the breeders suggest the success they have had is because they have out crossed to strengthen the gene. 
Albino olives are now quite regularly bred from Albino x Albino pairings with little to no issues in the offspring whereas 5 years or so ago all the albinos were from het x het pairings because the genes were so weak.



Sdaji said:


> It's amazing how many ridiculous lies there are, how little sense they make (admittedly, non geneticists wouldn't understand that they don't make sense)



Can you explain so a non geneticist such as myself can understand because it isn't making sense unless there is some other magical way to 'fix' the problems with albino's that breeders of these animals use.....maybe witchcraft or magic potions and Im honestly not trying to be a jerk I just want to understand.


----------



## Mick666 (Jul 23, 2018)

Peter Birch seems to have had success with out crossing albino macs. He has out crossed with his striped line that was hatching healthy, hungry babies. It makes sense to me, that you can add a line like that into a project. If we can add stripes to them, why not other traits, like healthy eaters? 
I'm planning on a het to het pairing next year, so I'd love to know more about this mutation.

This is the albino mac update video...


----------



## swampie (Jul 23, 2018)

I’ve had pretty good success with the albino Macs also, I’ve bred albino to albino 3 years in a row now, 6, 12 and 12 eggs, all hatched, most fed without much effort on my part with a few stragglers that eventually fed by themselves. 
I’ve had good success with het to het also, having higher percentages of albino’s than you would expect, same with albino to het.
Interestingly the hatchies from the albino to albino pairing have been the strongest to date.
I have had weak animals hatch out and have had some deaths but no more than I’ve had from other breedings. 
I’ve had plenty of dud clutches too though that have either just been crap from the start with infertiles or slugs, or go full term to near full term and die. Have had whole clutches hatch seemingly healthy and then lost nearly all of them within 7 day’s for no apparent reason, hets and albs.
I always get one or two animals with enlarged heart/lungs, I’ve had both hets and albs displaying this condition, they don’t end up in the breeding group, I’ve given a few of these away to my kids friends and they have grown up and seem perfectly fine now, no noticeable enlargement, don’t know if this means they are healthy, they could drop dead tomorrow for all I know but to look at them you wouldn’t know.
I get at least one animal each year with kinks, some have been bad others very minor, again they don’t get kept for breeding or on selling.
These defects haven’t been in every clutch but they have occurred in clutches from the same females each year.
[doublepost=1532307992,1532307233][/doublepost]On another note, I’d love me some of those Albino BHP’s, I think they are stunning.


----------



## Sdaji (Jul 28, 2018)

Sorry for the late reply, I've been on holiday for the last 9 days, just flew into Bangkok where I am a little more settled than on island beaches and moving to a new island/beach each day.

The Olives haven't changed, there have been many lies. If you stop and think about it for a while, you should be able to see that the story makes absolutely no sense. Or maybe you can't. I'm not sure, but believe me, it doesn't make sense. Or don't believe me, I don't really care.

Plenty of lies get told in the herp world, and the situation really hasn't changed. In the case of the Olives, people seem to imagine the problems were worse than they were and are now gone. The reality is that they were never all that bad and haven't changed.

In the case of the so-called macs, they will always be as bad. I've seen several breeders making ridiculous lies, often completely blatantly, with stories which make no sense. I found one ad particularly amusing, with a female sitting on her '100% fertile perfect clutch' with several obvious slugs! It was pretty funny, but I suppose he only expected to sell to the stupid, and those people wouldn't pick it, so it wouldn't hurt his target market.

Speaking of blatant lies which make no sense to anyone who actually understands genetics, someone posted a video. I won't comment for obvious reasons.

Someone said you can introduce other traits like good feeders, stripes, etc. Yes, absolutely, you can. But some traits can not be separated. Examples are jags/neuro, albino black-headeds/death(or occassional live non viable individuals), amelanistic skin/red eyes. Trying to separate these traits is like trying to breed an eyeless animal with good vision. Those traits are linked in a way which can not be broken. In the case of mutations which are single mutations, as all these examples are, the single mutation is what causes the trait or traits, and if one mutation causes two traits, the only way to get rid of either trait is to get rid of the mutation, which gets rid of both traits.

Adding two traits together like stripes and albinism is easy enough. Separating pleiotropic traits is impossible in these cases. Separating unrelated traits is easy.

Paul: No, there is no easy way to fix these problems. Or any way at all. No, I can't explain it to most laymen without spending a long time (at least a few hours with most people, and some will never get it, even if they spend years getting a genetics major).

It is, however, really, really easy to make up lies which simple-minded people will believe if it is the type of stuff those people *want* to be true. If it is the type of stuff people don't want to be true, it is often the case that no amount of any type of evidence will ever be convincing, and I've stopped caring about trying to convince people if they are closed-minded.

In the future we will have healthy albino black-headeds and Antaresia. It will be when we find entirely new mutations, not by somehow 'fixing' the existing mutations.

One thing which may explain the concept to some people, is that we don't typically just have random lines of snakes with masses of nasty problems, yet we do have some mutations which have nasty problems. This shows that the problems are caused by the mutation. These mutations are not big things which are spread all through the genetics. They are one, single, indivisible gene (sic). The only way to get rid of the problem is to get rid of that gene (sic).

Also consider that all of the Olives everywhere seem to magically have had the problem fixed! If the problem actually had been solved, it would only have been solved in isolated lines/individuals, and the majority would still have the problem. The only explanation which makes any sense is the obvious one; the story is false, and nothing has actually changed.

Oh, and by the way, the 'albinos produced from hets or albino x het are better than albinoes produced from albino x albino' is absolute nonsense. Anyone telling it is either mistaken or deliberately lying.


----------

