# Super Spider? (Royal Python)



## Mujician

I've only heard about people with spiders - never super spiders. Surely they must exist (even if only in the genes as opposed to a visible difference) Has anyone got pics of a super spider (compared to a spider?)


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## markhill

theres a Spider Super Pastel (AKA Killer Bee Spider)
NERD - New England Reptile Distributors - NERD's Ball Python Collection


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## NBLADE

a super spider is the same as a normal spider in looks, the only difference is normal spider to a normal royal would get half normals half spiders, wheras a super spider to a normal all spiders, but breeders can't sell the babies as superspiders because to find out if they are super they would have to be grown on and bred from, which would be a very long way round for the breeder, 


also the spider super pastel, is the result of a spider being bred to a super pastel, not involving a super spider


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## Ssthisto

"Super" is not strictly speaking synonymous with "homozygous". 

The way herpers tend to use Super is to describe the homozygous form of a codominant morph. By definition, a homozygous codominant "super" animal looks different to a heterozygous codominant.... 

As far as anyone knows, a homozygous spider looks the same as a heterozygous spider (or at least, no 'different looking' living animal has ever been produced). This means that Spider appears to be true dominant (not codominant) and thus doesn't have a "super" form. I don't know if anyone's proved out a homozygous spider yet, however - most of the time, people who buy spiders do not bother breeding them to OTHER spiders (thus making it unlikely they'll get homozygous spiders) since you only need one to make the morph.


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## NBLADE

but spider to normal will not yield all baby spiders, there will be normals, so not dominant, as all babies would be spiders for it to be dominant


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## Ssthisto

Dominant is not the same thing as 'homozygous'.

Dominant means "Animal looks the same whether it has one copy of the gene or two - whether it is het or homozygous".

Homozygous means "Animal has two genes that are exactly alike at that gene locus."

In order to get 100% visual offspring from a pairing, you need the animal to be homozygous... but an animal who has two copies of the gene for albino is still not "Dominant" albino. Albino, as a gene, is recessive to normal not-albino.

Spider, as a gene, is dominant to normal not-spider. Just because the animal is heterozygous for a dominant gene and won't produce 100% offspring with that gene does not mean that the gene itself is not dominant.


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## snd geckos

as far as i know there is no spider het's so breed a spider to a normal you should get 50% spiders and 50% normals that dont carry the spider gene


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## Young_Gun

There are Homozygous spiders about and you find out whether you have one or not by putting it to say a normal 50% 50% you have a Spider 100% spider hatchlings you have a homozygous.

The KillerBee is a super pastel x spider, not super spider x pastel.

No dominant or co-dominant morphs have hets, and 'siblings' are genetically the same as normals.


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## Ssthisto

Young_Gun said:


> There are Homozygous spiders about and you find out whether you have one or not by putting it to say a normal 50% 50% you have a Spider 100% spider hatchlings you have a homozygous.
> 
> No dominant or co-dominant morphs have hets, and 'siblings' are genetically the same as normals.


You've contradicted yourself there.... if you get 50% normal hatchlings from a Spider parent that Spider is a het itself - it is heterozygous for the Spider gene. 

"Het" does not mean "carries the gene invisibly" - it just means that the two genes of a pair are different.

If someone tries to sell you a "het spider" that looks normal, it is a normal and is not het for the Spider gene at all.
If someone tries to sell you a "het spider" that looks like a spider, it is quite probably a spider with only one copy of the gene.
If someone tries to sell you a "spider" that looks like a spider it's STILL probably heterozygous for the gene - having only one copy - unless BOTH of its parents were visual spiders.


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## arkreptiles

Ssthis to is right again!!

As far as I'm aware the Spider morph is thought to be Dominant - in other words it will 'look like a spider' whether it has one or two genes for spider. However since not many people breed spiders together (if at all) then most available spiders in the market will be 'hets' - i.e. carry one gene for spider not two.

Hopefully someone who reads this will know if anyone has paired two Spiders together. This would answer the question of its dominance or not - I still suspect however that it is dominant and therefore there is no 'super' form.

This is similar to the Enigma issue in Leo's hence why we are breeding two Enigma's together to produce certain Homozygous Enigma's before introducing other genes from different morphs into them.


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## Ssthisto

nicklamb said:


> Hopefully someone who reads this will know if anyone has paired two Spiders together. This would answer the question of its dominance or not - I still suspect however that it is dominant and therefore there is no 'super' form.


From what I understand and what I've read on the history of the morph, the first spiders were kept by the original discoverer and heavily tested against each other, chasing the "Super" form - and no such form was ever found. Which leaves two options, really:

1. Spider is a true dominant gene that looks the same whether the animal is het or homozygous for the gene.
2. Spider is a lethal homozygous dominant gene where homozygous animals die in the egg and all the existing animals are heterozygous for the gene.

At this point I'm not sure anyone's proven they have a homozygous Spider. 

I'm tempted, when I start producing dominant and codominant morph royals, to sell animals who are heterozygous for the gene (i.e. Spiders who have only one Spider parent, or Mojaves who are not of the Super morph) as "Het" for the gene. And when people question it, explain that the animal only carries one copy, because only one parent could give them the copy of the gene; this is why they won't produce 100% the same morph as they are when they're bred.

The normal "siblings" will be sold as "CB Royal Pythons".


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## thickgiraffe

if a spider is dominant and a normal is dominant (obviously) then the resulting offspring should be 50/50 normal and spiders as both dominant genes would be as equally likely to be expressed (in theory ratios often vary), therefore the offspring ratios are the same as breeding a co-dom e.g. pastel, to a normal, i.e. 50/50, the only difference being that pastels have a super form. If i am wrong on this please correct me but that is how im trying to make sense of the spider morph. I am considering mating a male spider to a female pastel, would this create 50/50 spider/pastels? or would it be 50/50 spider/bumblebee ? i cannot get this whole pastel-spider mating worked out in my head! oh well, i may just have to see what happens.


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## Ssthisto

Try to think of it this way.

Take two silver coins and two copper pennies.

Silver = Spider, where Heads is a visual Spider, and Tails is a non-carrier normal.
Pennies = Pastel, where Heads is a visual Pastel, and Tails is a non-carrier normal.

If you know that the Pastel isn't a visual spider, set one silver coin down tails-up - it doesn't show it, therefore it doesn't carry it - it's "normal-not-Spider".
If you know that the Spider isn't a visual Pastel, set one penny down tails-up - it doesn't show it, therefore it doesn't carry it - it's "normal-not-Pastel".

Then flip the other two coins.

You'll find you have a 25% chance of each of the following outcomes:

Silver coin tails, Penny Tails (Not-Spider, Not-Pastel)
Silver coin heads, Penny Tails (Spider, not-pastel)
Silver coin tails, Penny heads (Not-Spider, Pastel)
Silver coin heads, Penny heads (Spider Pastel - AKA bumblebee)

Spider is dominant to "normal not Spider".
Spider is not dominant to or recessive to or any other relation to "Normal not Pastel".


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## paulh

thickgiraffe said:


> if a spider is dominant and a normal is dominant (obviously) then the resulting offspring should be 50/50 normal and spiders as both dominant genes would be as equally likely to be expressed (snip)


Ssthisto is right about the spider X pastel mating.

A bit about terminology. The normal version of the spider mutant gene is not a dominant gene. Dominant, codominant, and recessive aways either imply or specify a comparison. In this case, the comparison is the spider mutant gene vs. the normal gene. Gregor Mendel and most genetics texts would call the spider gene the dominant gene and the normal gene the recessive gene because the normal gene is only expressed when there is no spider gene in the gene pair. The pro geneticists use the normal gene as the standard of comparison, which means it is neither dominant nor codominant nor recessive. Mutant genes are dominant, codominant, or recessive in comparison to normal. So the pros would also call the spider mutant a dominant, but they'd just call the normal gene the normal gene.

Except in special cases (and this is not a special case), we have to think of pairs of genes as the result of a mating rather than single genes. Then the appearance is derived from the gene pair(s).

In this spider X normal mating, the spider parent has a spider mutant gene paired with a normal gene. And the normal parent has a pair of normal genes. The spider and normal babies have the same gene pair as their parents.

This sort of thing is easier to understand if one uses coins or scraps of paper or something to make the gene pair(s).


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## nuggett5

there was someone i think it was ukmorphs that bread a spider albino to spider he got normals and spiders wich are all het for albino but i remember he got two spiders wich were very diffrent to the others ill have to see if i can dig it out


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## nuggett5

found it!
http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/forums/snakes/197523-weird-spider-out-one-my.html


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