Hypo Bearded Dragons for sale in the UK
About the Hypo gene
Hypo is short for hypomelanistic, and it does one thing: it cuts the black and dark brown pigment the animal would otherwise lay over its own colour. Nothing is added. What you see is the yellow, orange or red that was already there, no longer muted.
Appearance
The claws are the marker. A hypo has clear, white, ivory or pale cream claws, with none of the dark stripe that runs through the nail of a normal dragon, and it has them from hatching. Check all twenty. Retained shed, staining, lighting and a dark toe underneath will each make a clear claw look pigmented, and one genuinely dark nail is the answer. Black and dark brown are reduced across the brow, cheeks, snout and beard, so the facial markings read softer and cleaner, and the pattern is usually kept but softened, with more pattern loss in adults. The iris stays visible; solid black eyes belong to Translucent. Expression varies enough that a hypo can grow up a plain grey or beige adult, and the beard still darkens on stress and display, because the trait reduces dark pigment rather than disabling the response.
Genetics
Simple recessive, so Het Hypo, 50% Het Hypo and 66% Het Hypo animals all look like a normal bearded dragon, and a visual hypo carries a copy from each parent. The trap runs the other way as well. Clear nails are also a line bred look arrived at by selection, at least two hypomelanistic forms circulate in the hobby, and no molecular test exists, so pale claws on a drab adult prove nothing on their own. Hatchlings are easier to call than adults, and the only way to settle an adult is to breed it to a known hypo and read the clutch. Ask what the pair has produced, and whether the hypo side has been proven out. Hypo is independent of scale structure and combines with Leatherback, Dunner, Translucent, Zero, Witblits, Genetic Stripe and the colour lines; Hypo Translucent has its own catalogue row. Hypo Pastel, Pastel and the dragons sold as leucistic appear to be this same gene under different names, so a line claiming all three is claiming one thing three times.