Introduceing the Baby Bulldozers at last YAY!!!!!

[Zorst]

Well finally with some help by a good friend my camera situation finally got sorted out. So here are the Baby Bulldozers I've been going on about for weeks now. You'll just have to hang with me as I figure out the focus n color saturation on this camera, auto focus was doing some very strange things yesterday. The colors a bit weird as the weather was so dark n bad outside I had to have the electric lights on.

But you can see in at least a couple of the pictures the silver grey on 2 of the albino baby bulldozers faces and Eye stalks, Ive also got some photo's with the parents, and especially for Etana, some with Tauno's siblings who are the ones with the yellow shells whilst the all tucked into some hard boiled egg. As you can see Etana As I said they are still small and one of the dark ones hasn't really grown but they are all healthy and active. The Immaculata's who slimed into and photo bombed the photo's just has to be in on everything the Bulldozers like to do.

The tanks a bit small for the Adult bulldozers but is only a temp tank until there new one arrives hence they haven't got any wood or sticks to climb on in it.

Enjoy

Zorst



Meet the gang of baby Bulldozers.





Help You guy's there a Giant monster snail after me! Come back here son I just want to say hello!



I'm still not sure about this Giant Monster Snail is this really my Mum/ Dad? Are we all gonna get that big???



How many pairs of eye stalks can we see?




Mum / Dad taking a good look about and a little bulldozer joining in as the other Parent is the pure Sutralis whose eyes and face coming out from the flowerpot at the bottom of the photo. Ok this guy was real shy of the camera and the inside of the flower pot needed investigating.



The Baby Bulldozers and Tauno's siblings enjoying some hard boiled egg.

[etana]

Eeeeeee!!! The cuteness is overwhelming!!! I love the little one with the black face, poor fellow is so out of place with the silver and white ones. And the second last pic where one baby sits on another, facing the opposite direction lol!!

It's actually little Tauno's siblings you're talking about, Taavetti is from a different place & bloodline. But oh, it's so good to see them! Tauno has had a crazy growth spurt lately, his shell is a whole 5.5cm long now, which is still very small for a snail his age - but he seems to be in perfect health in every other way, and now he's even matured sexually and seems to have a lot of dirty dreams!

Thanks so much for sharing, I look forward to seeing more pics from you.

[Zorst]

Damn I'm bad when it comes to names lol. I have edited my original post to say Tauno's siblings. Tauno's def quite a bit bigger than these guys then but they are starting a bot of a growth spurt. I just hope the little guy catches up, there living conditions have been perfect for them along with food so I'm not sure why they never really grew.

Glad you like them all the same Etana, I have to say they are great to watch and keep me highly amused.

Zorst

[cliath]

Their beautiful Zorst! They have such a cute little round shell compared to fulica I also like the little dark skinned fellow but they are all beautiful

[Cashell]

They're all looking nice and cute!

[Zorst]

They sure are cute by the bucket full, they are all currently climbing over the 3 sleeping Albopticas and having a great time.

One of the Albopticas keeps putting out an eye stalk now and then n patting them as they go by. I just looks like there all playing in a playground climbing up n snailing down again lol .

Zorst

[Selena]

aaah, very cute! So one is dark and all the others white? From the same clutch? I dind't know that's possible!

[Zorst]

yeah its possible due to the fact that one of the parents has a White Ovum as a parent, so these are throw backs genetically.Thats why some r pure white, some r white with silver faces n eye stalks n then another one is a dark after the other parent. Can wait to see what colors the next clutch brings.

Zorst

[Selena]

Wow, thats great to know, i can imagine each clutch have to be a nice suprise ? Btw: I thought albino genes are recessive and if not both parents are albino, the offspring could never be an albino, but it is possible. very nice!

[Zorst]

Seem's it happens in horses also one parent can carry the Albino gene and there's about a 6.25% apparently of an albino offspring. So rare but it does happen.

The horses I have here because they are a very primitive breed are part of a genetic testing program one section of which is about colors. They have discovered a lot of colors and new color genetic mixes or extra info about existing stuff from this research. I can't wait until they finished the testing in a few years time and release all the info that they find, it'll be fascinating to read n figure out as some of these genetic markers affect white markings and horses coat patterns.

So Snails at least that way wise aren't so dissimler to horses lol!

Zorst

[muddydragon]

That's not how recessive genes (actually alleles) work. You can get albino offspring from two black individuals if they both carry an albino allele. Basically a recessive allele is one that's not expressed if a dominant allele is present. typically animals have two copies of each gene (different types of these genes are called alleles) so say you have a pigment gene the complete version which produces pigment and makes the animal black called uppercase B and the one that doesn't function which would mean a lack of pigment leading to albinoism called lowercase b. the animals could therefore have 2 Bs (B,B) which would be black, two bs (b,b) which would be albino because they cannot produce pigment. or one B and one b (B,b) which would be black because the dominant pigment producing version of the gene would compensate for the recessive one which is incapeable of producing pigment.

Therefore even two black individuals could produce albino offspring if they both carry the albino version of the pigment gene (i.e. if they're both B,b). this is because when the gametes (egg and sperm) are produced they only get one copy of the gene so the gametes would be either B or b.

so black parent who is Bb would produce 50% B gametes and 50% b gametes. parent two also black who is Bb would also produce 50% B gametes and 50% b gametes. these recombine at random so you would get BB offspring (black), Bb offspring (black) and bb offspring (albino).

So black parents can easily produce albino offspring.


It get's more complicated than this as not all genes are as simple as dominant or recessive, the level to which genes are expressed can vary and are influenced by other genes, different genes can interact differently and you can get several different alleles of a gene and also several different genes which are involved in colour. So things get complicted quickly.

it is even possible to cross two albino individuals who have different genes mutated that cause the albinoism and get black offspring as the fault in one gene can compensate for the fault in the other.

[etana]

Very interesting. I've been wondering what happened with my Arianta, the parents Old Grumpy (very dark, nearly blackish foot & shell) and Big Eyes (brown foot, brown shell) somehow produced many babies with almost white feet, some silver foot ones, and I think one has a dark foot. Old grumpy had spots on his shell, Big eyes does not - some babies grew spots after reaching sexual maturity, some remain unicolour. They all have huge white eyeballs though, lol. So weird but they're very pretty.

[Zorst]

Thanks MD interesting as one parent I was under the impression had no Albino genes its a normal dark color Suturalis. Thanks for clearing that up this color genetics is fascinating but a mine field to understand in any species.

Zorst

[mangoandlemon]

Ya it seems very complicated. Oh and the babies are reeeaaallly cute!

[giantsouthamerican2n]

Haha funny how they like to push things over.

[Zorst]

Push things over, dig holes under, around and through, then climbing up and down things all fun and games for babies snails. They sure keep me amused.

Zorst

[mangoandlemon]

Great mental image Zorst that had me smiling for a while!

[muddydragon]

it's very easy to have albino allele hidden in a lineage if they don't mate with another snail with the same albino allele then there wont be any albino offspring and some of the offspring will jsut continue to carry the ressesive albino allele. (recessive meaning not shown unless no dominant versions of the gene are present).

HOWEVER in your case i'll put money on none of your offspring actually being albino . Albino snails have pink eyes and no skin pigment atall (exept that they sometimes develop a yellow tinge over time). there are other snails which can be mistaken for albino however: you can get leucistic or black eyed white snails which look albino but have black eye spots, you can get leucistic or acromelanic snails they have black eye spots and any colour on the eyestalks and a stripe own their back but not on the rest of their body, you can get silver snails where i suspect the pigment is diluted so they have black eye spots and silvery skin which can be quite dark or almost white.

The reason i say or in some cases is because the term leucistic and acromelanic have very specific genetic meanings and since we don't know about the genetics in these cases and are basing it on phenotype (what they look like) alone then we can't reliably use these terms.


p.s. zorst the horse investigations sound fascinating - i bet there's lots of fun stuff going on there!

[Zorst]

Thanks for all this info MD, and yeah like you I now think that these baby bulldozers aren't Albino , but they sure are an interesting range of colors. I will however check there eye color closely when there next out and active. There all buried under various things at the moment asleep lol.

The horse research is proving to be really fascinating its part of a world wide genetic project being done on horses so they are now even able to figure out the different breeds of horse that went into making the breeds we have today as well as colors of direct yet unknown parents etc which is also proving to be very interesting. I cant wait until they publish all the findings when they have finished the research.

Zorst