Carrot Tail Leopard Geckos
The Carrot Tail leopard gecko has solid orange on its tail starting at the base. The best animals have orange going almost to the tip. Because keepers do not agree on how much orange earns the name, judge the tail in the photograph rather than the percentage in the title.
About the Carrot Tail gene
A line-bred leopard gecko trait, Carrot Tail, produces solid orange on the tail starting at the point where it joins the body. Keepers buy it for the tail, and an animal is priced by how much of that tail is orange. The name is also written carrottail.
Appearance
Orange begins as a band at the tail base. While it covers just a few tail bands on some geckos, the best ones have orange running almost to the tip. Top animals carry orange over 90% of the tail or beyond. At least 30% of the tail orange from the base is the usual yardstick. Keepers draw the line in different places, so weigh the percentage a seller quotes against the photograph. Normal leopard geckos often have scattered orange spotting on the tail, but this is not a carrot tail. This trait sits on the tail alone as the head, body and belly follow whatever morph the gecko is. It turns up across many morphs, most often in tangerine and hypo lines, and also in albinos, RAPTORs and Murphy Patternless.
Genetics
Carrot Tail is a selected line that is polygenic with no single gene behind it, meaning there is no het and no super form. You will find it listed as Carrot Tail and Pos Carrot Tail. Because it is polygenic, the amount varies from one hatchling to the next, though more orange comes from pairing geckos that already carry a lot of it over generation after generation. The names that include it are SHTCT, Super Hypo Tangerine Carrot Tail, and SHTCTB, which adds Baldy. Ray Hine in the United Kingdom began the classic carrot tail line.