Extreme Red Hognoses

Extreme Red is a red-intensity line in the western hognose snake, not a single gene. Generations of selective breeding pushed the ordinary buff-and-tan colouring of a western hognose toward saturated crimson, burgundy and rust tones. Keepers buy it for animals that read as vividly red rather than the muted brown-grey most wild-type hognose wear, and breeders use it as stock to push red into other colour lines.

Appearance

The tell is saturation, not pattern: an Extreme Red western hognose keeps the species' usual saddle-blotched layout, but every warm tone in it runs deeper, from brick red through crimson into burgundy, sometimes with the grey-brown background colour crowded out almost entirely. Because the line is built from many contributing genes rather than one locus, that intensity is not fixed: two animals from the same clutch can land at noticeably different points on the red spectrum, and the deepest, most saturated individuals are the ones breeders keep back for the line rather than sell on. Crossed with albino, the red sits directly on a white ground with none of the usual pattern colour to compete with it.

Genetics

Extreme Red is polygenic, colour built up from many genes working together rather than one dominant or recessive mutation, and it comes about through generations of pairing the reddest available animals rather than from a single genetic event. The line carries two names, Extreme Red and Pos Extreme Red: the second marks an animal that probably carries the line's colour genetics without a fully proven pedigree behind it, the same use of "possible" this hobby gives other line-bred colour projects, not a het in the single-gene sense. There is no way to confirm line quality on an unrelated animal beyond judging the colour itself, and no super form, because there is no single locus to double up on. The line traces to Justin Mitcham's Extremehogs, working from gloydi-locality stock refined for depth of red over successive generations.