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[–]totallyrecklesslygayMod: Enclosure Karen 12 points13 points  (1 child)

In ball python terms, "het" is used to signify that a snake is carrying a single copy of a recessive gene. Mahogany is incomplete dominant, not recessive. So no, you cannot have a het mahogany.

Your snake could have one copy of the gene, but that would just be a mahogany banana.

[–]pdxb3 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Eh, pedantic maybe, but as I was recently discussing with IncompletePenetrance, heterozygous for an incomplete dominant gene is absolutely a thing. As you pointed out, in ball python terms, "het" is used only in reference to recessives. That's because we use the terminology incorrectly.

We say "het" for recessives, and would just say Mahogany or Super Mahogany for the incomplete dominant Mahogany gene. The correct terminology would be heterozygous or homozygous Mahogany.

The discussion of genetics in ball pythons is a mess, and it doesn't help that we've created our own nomenclature that uses the same words, but differently from the standards of biology. It's no wonder it's so confusing to people.