On March 12, 2019, Steve Sykes, the manager of Geckos Etc. Herpetoculture, a well-known reptile breeding farm in the United States, briefly introduced the leopard gecko breeding farm London Leopa - owned by ロンドンレオパ on his official social media homepage. The "Oddball" mutated leopard gecko.

However, this leopard-print gecko had obvious congenital defects when he was born. Not only was he small, but he also had severe bone metabolism disease (MBD) in his leg bones. ).

Therefore, the survival prospects of the "Strange Ball" leopard geckos are not optimistic. As time goes by, the "Strange Ball" mutation breeding project seems to have been gradually forgotten by the leopard gecko breeding enthusiast community. Recently (October 20, 2023), Aaron Jousiffe, the manager of the leopard gecko breeding farm London Leopa - ロンドン レオパ, once again updated the new progress of the "Strange Ball" mutation breeding project on the official homepage of the world-renowned social media. #@London Leopa - ロンドン レオパ

Since 2018, I have not publicly shared the results of the leopard gecko "Strangeball" breeding project.

In the meantime, after extensive testing of all known and possible eye characteristics, including the Cipher gene, I was able to confirm the "Strange Ball" The phenotype must be an independent gene that is stably heritable.

The "Strange Ball" gene can make the overall body color of leopard geckos darker. Its function is similar to the way white pigment and yellow pigment can make the overall body color of leopard geckos lighter, but the result is exactly the same. on the contrary.

The "strange ball" gene also seems to change the stripes on the tails of leopard geckos, and no individual has shown stripes so far.

Individuals of all other genes or strains have tails with stripes or random stripes, and the sides are always black colored, and even the stripes on many individuals will "wrap" at the base of the tail.

In addition, the color of "Strange Ball's" legs and feet will become darker, showing strong melanin pigmentation, and almost no white pigment can be seen on the back and sides of the body.

Newly hatched "Strange Ball" larvae have no obvious neck stripes and always show irregular "broken stripes".

As for the eyes, "Strange Ball" looks like it has very solid black eyes. If you look closely, you can still distinguish it from the black eyes of Eclipse and Saifal.

Currently, all eyes of "Strange Balls" appear to be solid black eyes, with no local "snake eyes" appearance, even though some individuals have slightly visible irises. .

In addition to this, I have bred some "Strangeball" individuals with significantly larger proportions of eyes, but breeding for this trait is under further research and I believe the larger eyes It will not have any adverse effects on the health of leopard geckos.

The original "strange ball" is born weak, and many of its offspring will die within the first few months and grow slowly.

However, after extensive selective breeding using only strong offspring, there is reason to believe that the offspring bred from these stable individuals have a healthy physical foundation, and the "Bizarre Ball" breeding program can continue. go ahead.

There is still a lot of work to be done to integrate genetic breeding of leopard geckos into one of my favorite breeding programs, this work has begun and so far the results can be said to be exciting.

I also think that the potential of the "Kiwi Ball" breeding project I have seen now is worthy of my continued research on this new gene.

Although Aaron Jousiffe did not point out its genetic characteristics in the introduction of the "Strange Ball" breeding project, in his subsequent reply, he believed that the current expression of the "Strange Ball" gene is more likely to be a recessive species. sex gene, and heterozygous individuals will also have a certain lack of horizontal stripes on the back of the neck.

Even though the "Strange Ball" breeding project, like other eye mutations, has become more of a "genetic breeding practice" that breeders want to prove themselves, this time the leopard gecko " The effect of "Color Contact Lenses" can make your eyes look bigger, which is worth looking forward to.