ing. The first one was my original albino Darwin
female which had one jet black scale - not very
dramatic I know, but still a Paradox nonetheless! I
paired her one year with a male Zebra and
produced a healthy clutch of 100% hets. One of
those male hets has produced two Paradox animals
in two separate clutches. One of these has about
three black scales clustered together and the other
has approximately 5-6 scales that are a smudgy-
brown colour. A different male het was sold to a
friend and produced three Paradoxes in one clutch
(see comments
from Neville
Reibelt), all of
which exhibit
quite a lot of
black pigment
compared to my
animals. I have
been able to acquire one of these snakes and will
be pairing it back to one of the hets from my original
albino female.
disease etc. - it’s not a genetic trait with a straight
mode of inheritance, but its lurking in the back-
ground somewhere.
Another interesting thing I’ve noticed with most of
the Paradox albino Darwins and the Paradox T+
Children’s Python is that the pigment they do tend
to have (or gain) is often totally jet black and
frequently in greater quantity than you would expect
if that particular patch of the animal was normally
pigmented. There are obviously some that do
display the
‘normal’ colour-
ation in the areas
where they are
pigmented, but I
would almost put
these in a differ-
ent class. I think
this goes to show that there are several types of
Paradox and they produce different visual appear-
ances. Chimeras are generally obvious, with fairly
clear differences between one animal and the next,
but the albino Darwins, T+ Children’s Python and
the Paradox albino Spotted Python produced by
Snake Ranch are all something else. Anyway I
could ramble on about this for ages and still not
actually figure anything out!
‘It’s not a genetic trait with a straight
mode of inheritance, but it’s lurking in
the background somewhere.’
Dave, why do you think that some animals seem
more likely to throw the odd Paradox?
I think if you are talking about chimeras then lines
which tend to produce more twins will just simply
give you a higher chance of getting fused eggs, but
if you are talking about a leaky gene, or spontane-
ous gain of function, or whatever else is causing it,
then I would imagine that some animals are just
more predisposed to develop the condition. Like if
you have a family history of breast cancer, or heart
The leucistic Burmese Python they have at Australia
Zoo is a good example of what I believe to be a
‘spontaneous gain of function’-type paradox.
Left: suspected chimera Paradox T+
Marble/normal Children’s Python.
Above: Paradox T+ albino Children’s
Python. Images by Ben Thompson..