My big nerd friend is letting me post this write up she did on the Joker (rancid sausage) morph.
Let me preface with what makes the Joker so rare is the line doesn’t breed true, it’s very random with how it pops up in the line. It appears (best guess) to be a form of mosaicism, which is how a single joker individual was able to copulate with a female to produce eggs, and then later to go on and produce eggs itself. It’s both male and female, which can happen with mosaics.
This is a REALLY CONDENSED explanation of mosaicism, but it’s the gist:
“Why Joker California king snakes don’t “breed true”:
Assuming the Joker phenotype is truly a result of genetic mosaicism rather than chimaerism, this mutation happens after fertilization. Since genetic mosaics are defined as multicellular organisms possessing more than one genetic line, a single fertilized embryo contains various genetic lines.
Let’s say Joker is controlled by two different phenotypes Red (RR or Rb) and Blue (bb) present within a single animal. You get a Joker animal if the parents were of the RR and bb genotypes and during development one of the cells mutated from Rb to bb. Then this animal is considered a genetic mosaic since it has the Rb and bb genotypes in separate cells.
You can’t get this by just combining one RR parent with a bb parent without the mutation happening because you’re creating a single zygote with a single genotype (Rb).“
And this is why the Joker line will likely never breed true. It relies on this genetic mutation to happen for it to present itself. You can’t just breed Joker to Joker. It’s interesting the mutation happens more often in this line, but the latest person working with them made 40 offspring and got NO Jokers.
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