Witblits Bearded Dragons for sale in the UK

Witblits is a recessive mutation that takes the pattern off a bearded dragon and mutes the colour rather than removing it. The name is Afrikaans for white lightning, and the morph came out of South Africa, which makes it one of the few bearded dragon genes that did not start in the United States or Europe.

Appearance

A Witblits has none of the spots, blotches or lateral stripes an ordinary dragon shows. It reads as one tone the whole way along, and that tone is warm: cream, tan, sandy, pale brown or a soft light grey. The early ones were a fairly dull earth brown, and line breeding since has pushed the better animals towards a brighter sandy orange, so what turns up in a listing photo depends heavily on the line behind it. The animal still makes pigment, and that is the difference between Witblits and the near colourless Zero. The cue keepers use to tell the two apart is the shoulder pads: a Zero keeps dark pads on the front shoulders, a Witblits does not. Scales and eyes are normal, so nothing about the head or the spike rows will tell you the gene is there.

Genetics

Recessive, so a dragon either has two copies and shows it, or carries one and gives nothing away. Het Witblits, 50% Het Witblits and 66% Het Witblits animals rest on the paperwork behind them rather than on anything you can see. Witblits and Zero sit at separate loci and do not mask each other, which is why an animal homozygous for both is its own morph, the Wero, rather than a het of either. Silverback is the third patternless recessive and a separate gene again. Witblits stacks readily with the colour and scale genes, and Hypo Witblits, Translucent Witblits, Leatherback Witblits and Dunner Witblits all turn up on listings. Paradox patches, which follow no inheritance pattern at all, show most sharply against a pale base like this one.