Postby reaperreptiles » Sun Jun 05, 2011 9:24 am
Its interesting you say that bc I thought the same thing too. I was lucky enough to view both the parents and they were both in fact classic northerns. They told me every season they end up with a few 'odd' looking babies that have the neon yellow. Well, I was very interested in why this would happen so I contacted some 'experts' on genetics and some on blueys. Also met up with my local exotic vet at a show and had a long discussion on the matter of skinks genetics since he breeds almost all of the species himself. From information I gathered on literature and from the 'experts' I was surprised. Between the 70's and early 90's, without the knowledge of bts that we have today, many people cross bred northerns with easterns or other species and sold them as northerns. This integrade was them bred back to another northern who was then bred back to another northern. The bloodline now has blueys that look completely northern but still have the eastern or other species genes hidden way back in there DNA. Mack's parents, most likely, both have eastern(or some other species) DNA hidden in there coding from years down there bloodlines. Having crossed two classic northerns with hidden DNA sequences of eastern means that it is more likely possible that when bred you will have a baby or two that show more traits that are comparable with easterns or other species even though these babies are genetically northerns and when crossed with northerns will produce more northerns. If I breed Mack to my female classic that has clean bloodlines it is less likely I will end up with babies that look like mack, this will also weaken the hidden DNA sequence that mack exhibits and make it even more less likely to pass on again. Another possibility I was given is that Macks bloodlines could be traced back to the 'southern' northerns or the northerns that lie in the more southern parts of there territory. it has been observed that northerns found more north have lighter coloration while northerns found in the more southern regions tend to have darker colors and exhibit traits more common in easterns. The same goes with easterns, animals found farther north tend to show less black with brighter coloration while sounth they tend to have more striping and black markings. I am not anywhere near an expert, this is just information I have pulled from literature, while most of it is info I took from the experts I have talked with over the last few months. Visually, Mack looks very odd (those temporal streaks have faded away since that picture and the banding has broken up a bit and every shed continues to break apart further) but genetically speaking he is a northern and will produce northern babies.
