Irian Jaya Jaguar - Silver/Blue Project
This is a project that's been here almost a decade now, going back to an old wild collected female Irian Jaya that I purchased from Tom Weidner of Habitat Systems in 2002. This snake looked OLD and dark - and honestly, not attractive - but she had a weird bluish look to her sides. I hadn't seen enough Irian Jayas to know if that was all that unusual, so I initially didn't think much of it. This snake had never bred successfully for Tom, and in my care she laid a clutch of infertile eggs her first season. The following season, I was able to pair her with my original GQ line male. That year I got a good clutch and one of the 12 babies had a distinctly silver ground color and the pattern was almost purple instead of the usual burgundy/red color. This got my attention, but my hopes were quickly dashed when one of the veteran members on a carpet forum told me that it wasn't all that unusual for babies to have an axanthic/anerythristic look to them. That snake eventually grew into a fairly normal looking Irian Jaya (the female named "Silver" just FYI), so to me that was just more proof that the "veteran member" I mentioned above was correct. Looking back now, I don't know if he was telling the truth or what, but it's been seven years and I still have yet to see another line of Irian Jayas produce babies like these.
The following year, 2005, the old female was bred to a Jaguar to make the first ever Irian Jaya Jaguars produced in the United States. In 2006, I decided to repeat the GQ pairing. This time I got four of the "silver" looking babies. At that point, I took some more pictures and I then proceded to sell three of the four "silver" babies at a slightly higher price than the others (like $50 more). Remember - these things didn't seem to look much different as they matured - and my Jaguar pairing the year before hadn't produced any silver babies. They had an interesting story and history, but there wasn't much to really look at.
Since then, the old female IJ has passed away, but I still have a number of breeders produced by her, or by her offspring. Some of these include Bullwinkle (IJ Jaguar - offspring), Tripod (pure IJ - offspring) and of course Silver (pure IJ - offspring).
When Bullwinkle was bred to Tripod in 2007 (both offspring of that original female), I had produced the first 75% Irian Jaya Jaguars in the United States and there was one snake with an almost white ground color and a bright red pattern. She was a clutchmate of SOB (Son Of Bullwinkle - my now famous 75% IJ Jaguar breeder male) and she was so outrageously nice looking that SOB was a distant second place in the clutch. Not once did the thought cross my mind that this snake was a "silver" one. However, as she grew, I noticed her color was not developing like SOB or any of her other siblings that I was holding onto. Still, this "silver" business was the last thing I was concerned with in a smoking clutch of 75% IJ Jaguars, so I still hadn't started connecting the dots in my head. In fact, it wasn't until sometime in 2010 when she had reached maturity that I noticed a distinct bluish color to her pattern. The lightbulb finally came on!
As luck would have it, I kept that one "silver" male hatchling (2006 - Male 5) Irian Jaya that I produced here in the 2006 clutch. That snake was raised slowly, and at one point, I had even offered him to a friend so that he could work the project. That's how serious I took this - I was literally trying to pawn the male off on a friend!
At this point, I don't know if there's a genetic mutation involved or if it's just a strong polygenic phenotype (something that could be selectively bred, in other words). Whatever it is, it has popped up in this lineage time and time again over the past decade. At this point, it's more of a curiosity than anything - what will happen if we breed two of these snakes together? Is it a dominant or co-dominant mutation with a more impressive super, or is it something we can exagerrate through selective breeding? This year's clutch should give us at least a better idea.
