# Albino Breeding?



## Jack Green (Apr 14, 2016)

How are tortoises selectively bred as albinos I have looked everywhere and I just can't seem to find anything about it anywhere I know that a pair of "hypos" are but I don't even know what those are. Sorry if I seem uneducated I'm kinda new to tortoise breeding.


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## ZEROPILOT (Apr 14, 2016)

I think it's pretty hit and miss. Even two albinos wont guarantee a fully albino clutch.
Though I have NO first hand knowledge of how to selectively breed tortoises.


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## N2TORTS (Apr 14, 2016)

ZEROPILOT said:


> I think it's pretty hit and miss. Even two albinos wont guarantee a fully albino clutch.
> Though I have NO first hand knowledge of how to selectively breed tortoises.


HUH?.........Sorry Z'man....please becareful with advice - unless first hand knowledge. This can and will make it confusing for others...and even more so for the OP of this thread.
First of all this is a genetics question:
Albino x Albino will ALWAYS produce albino babies; There is a sure way to break down how and why this happens, you can use a formula called a Punnett Square to predict your chances of hatching out specific types of offspring. Using a punnett square properly will enable you to figure out potential offspring for any possible combination of traits.


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## N2TORTS (Apr 14, 2016)

For those wishing a GREAT read and some understanding on reptile genetics - I HIGHLY recommend this book by Charles Pritzel.


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## Jack Green (Apr 14, 2016)

N2TORTS said:


> For those wishing a GREAT read and some understanding on reptile genetics - I HIGHLY recommend this book by Charles Pritzel.


Thanks I think I will check out that book because I am very interested in the topic


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## dmmj (Apr 14, 2016)

my brain hurts...... Ow


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## Jack Green (Apr 14, 2016)

dmmj said:


> my brain hurts...... Ow


I know right genetics are a funny thing but I really am intrigued by them


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## dmmj (Apr 14, 2016)

I'm actually fascinated by it as well but like I said above it hurts my brain


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## N2TORTS (Apr 14, 2016)

Jack Green said:


> I know right genetics are a funny thing but I really am intrigued by them


Jack'......for a short explanation and our own Hypo project - Check out our site and look under "Hypo Redfoot Project" on the tittle page. Click there .....
Cheers'
JD~

http://www.tortoisecove.com/


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## N2TORTS (Apr 14, 2016)

dmmj said:


> I'm actually fascinated by it as well but like I said above it hurts my brain


It's all good Dj..... ....maybe just the coffee.?


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## Jack Green (Apr 14, 2016)

N2TORTS said:


> Jack'......for a short explanation and our own Hypo project - Check out our site and look under "Hypo Redfoot Project" on the tittle page. Click there .....
> Cheers'
> JD~
> 
> http://www.tortoisecove.com/


that link answered all my questions thanks!


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## ZEROPILOT (Apr 14, 2016)

Indeed. Thanks N2TORTS!


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## DPtortiose (Apr 14, 2016)

N2TORTS is spot on!


Some genetics 101 and animal breeding:


*Chromosomes*: this is tightly wrapped package is made from _DNA_, it contains all heritable traits. These heritable traits determine your height, hair color, eye color to your nose and ears. This is your blueprint of who you are. A single one of the heritable trait is called a _gene_. I can image all these terms are might confusing so look at it like this:


Imagine your body as a building. To build it correctly and up to code you need a blueprint. So you grab a piece of paper and a pencil and start drawing. The paper and pencil is your DNA, the building blocks from which the blueprint is made. After a couple of hours of drawing you’re quite pleased with yourself, the bathroom, living room, windows and doors are all in the right place. Al these little elements, like different rooms and doors, are your genes. The little pieces of information that tell you what and where everything needs to be. And finally to keep your blueprint safe, you roll it up and put it in a cylinder. This is your chromosome, a way to safely and effectively store your blueprint.


Since nature favors stability and having all you genetic information on a single chromosome is rather risky, chromosomes always have partner with genes that code for the same thing; like hair color, eye color etc. So chromosomes always lie in pairs. So genes always have a partner. At your conception you get one chromosome from your mother and one from your father. So like you might have guessed; you also get a gene from your father and one from your mother.


As you’ve most likely noticed, your mom and dad don’t tend to look alike each other. So it’s very likely you got ‘different’ genes from your parents. These genes will both code for hair color for example, but the one from your mother will be one for blond hair and the one from your father for brown hair. We call these variations in a gene _alleles_.


So how come someone with a blond haired mother and brown haired father don’t produce a half blond/brown baby? Well some traits are dominant over other traits. For example if the blond mother and brunette father have a brunette baby boy, we know that brunette is *dominant* trait and blond *recessive *trait. So if you get a dominant trait and a recessive trait, the dominant trait will always suppress the recessive trait. For a recessive trait to be expressed, you have to have two of that recessive trait.


Since breeders like to know what kind of offspring they get when they breed two animal together, a simply crossing schedule can be made. Like we stated before everyone has a pair of chromosomes and thus a pair of genes for a trait. Only one of these genes is passed to the offspring, that needs to get the other gene from the other parent. For the sake of space we’ll short the full name of these trait to a single letter, since it rather bothersome to write down brunette and blond every time. We’ll give brunette the letter *B* and blond the letter *b*. Dominant traits always get a uppercase letter, while recessive traits always get a lowercase. So since every parent has two genes I can call the brunette father: *BB* and the blond mother: *bb*. Now it’s as simple as drawing a tic-tac-toe grid and filling it in as seen below.







Since every parent can only pass one a single gene we can fill in the combinations like seen below:






Since the offspring has the combination *Bb* and thus a (uppercase) dominant trait suppressing the recessive (lowercase) trait, the offspring will be a brunette and not blond.

This is a rather simply one since every combination is the same. But it can be a little bit more tricky. It’s possible that you have a dominant trait and a recessive trait, for example, your brunette father has a recessive trait for being a blond. You won’t see this in his looks though, since this trait is recessive and thus is being suppressed by his dominant brunette trait. So you can fill in the schedule again like below:






Now you’ve suddenly got two combinations that only has *bb, *meaning the recessive blond trait isn’t being suppressed and the offspring is blond. Since you’ve only got 4 possible combinations and 2 of these combinations are *bb, *you’ve got a 50% change of getting a blond child.

That’s pretty much a very limited version in a nutshell. So what kind of offspring do albino parents give? Well albinism is recessive trait, so if an animal is albino both his genes most hold the albino trait. Since both parents are albino and thus only carry the albino trait, only albino offspring will be born.


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## dmmj (Apr 14, 2016)

Arrrrrrgh, could you just have said magic and left it at that?


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## juli11 (Apr 14, 2016)

DPtortiose said:


> N2TORTS is spot on!
> 
> 
> Some genetics 101 and animal breeding:
> ...




This fun will be a part of my biology exam next months


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