Being " Behind the times"

[Red Ink AUS]

wait..if being leatherback is a recessive gene, being not leatherback (regular spikey) would be the dominant gene, which makes perfect sense. BUT, that would mean you wouldnt be able to breed the two at all then and get leatherbacks because the dominant gene would present. well, unless of course the non leatherback was a carrier of the gene....

Yes and no mate, the recessive gene must be present in both parents as it has two double up in order for it too happen (blue eyes, brown eyes in humans). If only one parent carried the recessive gene then you have no chance of the recessive trait happening but a percentage of the offprings may carry the reccessive trait. So two het leatherback parents can produce a percentage of leatherbacks as they both carry the recessice trait. You increase your chances by increasing the carriers of the recesive traits as in two blue eyed parents have a greater chance of producing more blue eyed children than having both be "het" for blue eyes.

I think leatherback is a stable mutation and i don't really know of any adverse effects from the condition apart from them just looking different, the scalation counts are the smae and the thickness of the scales are the same (well apart from missing the tubercles of course).

Tubercles are an envrionmental adaptation in BDs (predatory defense as well as escape mechanism).

 

[northface75]

yep. thats exactly what I was saying basically .

 

[sara]

The first dragon I ever saw was a grey color with spikes,had no idea what the critter was but fell in love just the same. My hubby and I agree we LOVE our scaly babies best and wouldn't know what to think about "snake skin" beardies.Sorry I am sure they are beautiful just like Tang that Tom has but for us scaly is better and I LOVE the way ours blow out their beards. I have some awesome pictures of beards. They look so................something special. Was never that good with words.