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Cornsnake Morph Guide ®

Allelic Mutations

Charles Pritzel

Ultramel X Ultramel
	Het Ultra	Het Ultra
	Het Amel	Het Amel

Notice with this last clutch that you are crossing a morph to a normal, and it is not true that the offspring are het for what the morphed parent is. Notice that half are only het for ultra, the other half are only het for amel. The difficulty many hobbyists have with this concept is not because the rules have changed, but that the slang usage of "het" (to mean "carrying a hidden gene") was inaccurate, and is now insufficient.

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Another very important point is that amelanistic cornsnakes cannot be het for ultra, no matter what their parents are. An amel corn is always this gene pair:


To be het for ultra, a cornsnake must be one of these two types:
(Ultramel)
(Normal, het Ultra)

The trick is that "het" has long been associated only with normal looking snakes, but that was only a coincidence. This is because until recently, only simple recessives were being dealt with. An ultramel cornsnake is, in fact, heterozygous. It is "single het" for ultra and amel. (It is not "double het" because it is only het at one locus.)

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