cornmorphs said:
het means a snake holds a gene for a colour morph that is different is appearance to what the actual snake is..
i.e a normal corn snake is normal to look at, but if its het for say amel.. then bred to an albino or another 100% het albino, then there will be some albinos in the clutch.
Not necessarily. Every individual has two alleles (versions) for every gene they have. Het is short for heterozygous which means the individual has two different versions of the gene. Heterozygous is the alternative to homozygous, which means both versions of the gene are the same.
On top of that, some versions are dominant over others, i.e. say "X" is dominant over "Y" and the individual has the genes XY. The individual is heterozygous but will only show the appearance of the X gene.
In the example above, X is "normal" and Y is albino, so the individual has the albino gene but doesn't show it in its appearance. In order for the albino characteristic to show up the snake would have to have the genes YY.
I said "not necessarily" because sometimes the characteristic is dominant over the normal type, so the snake would still be heterozygous for the characteristic but WOULD show it in its appearance.
It's not to do with what the snake looks like, its to do with its genes.