is this normal

I just bought an adult female albino burmese python and she has brown eyes. Is this unusual or not?
jake

do you think it might just be the light or the angle of it?
Because mine have red

no ist's not the angle of light. I have two other albino burms, they both have the red eyes. Her eyes are definately brown.

Don't quote me on this one, but I believe a true albino or amelanistic snake has pink eyes (Tyrosinase Negative). I had seen an article on color morphs a while back and one snake listed as an Albino was pointed out to be an extreme version of a Hypomelanistc snake because the eyes were not pink. The article was not clear on this statement. These may be an animal that is (Tyrosinase Posative) , a snake with some pigmentation and albino gene, or what some call a partial albino. You can get a lot of information about albinism on the internet as well. Good Luck, MY

Generally speaking, albino as a term refers to the lack of pigmentation in the skin (in snakes, usually refers to the lack of melanin, or black, pigmentation.) Since the eyes show this pigmentation, this is indeed an odd situation. A picture would be most helpful here. I can't help but think of a couple of other morphs/cultivars which might qualify such as the fader burmese or (you should hope for this one) something similar to what has been seen in ball pythons...a paradox albino (you could actually make $$ with offspring from one of these in a burm.)

The past couple of years has seen a lot of new morphs in burms brought onto the market and we're just now beginning to understand that their variability is possibly as wide-ranging as the ball python. Along this line of thought, I suspect that we have a heck of a lot to learn about their genetics that are only being vaguely thought about at this time. I think that burms have been pushed to the back of the pack on the genetics issue because of their great size, cheap prices (or fast falling prices) due to such large clutch sizes and the fact that balls are imported in such large numbers each year. There is also the fact that ball pythons don't provide as much "bang for the buck" in the snake skin trade as burms, so it is possible that most burms that are taken from the wild are larger and used for the skins rather than exported like ball pythons. I think we've probably missed a lot of neat morphs in burms because of things like this.

So, have you got pics?

David

I wrote Jake in a private e-mail last night, so will post here as well. It is definitely an albino. The definite marker was the red/pink pupil of the eye. The confussion was in the iris which appeared to have a brownish tint to the pink. As I told Jake, albino, or amelanism to be more exact, in snakes is defined as the absence of melanin, or black pigmentation. This snake meets this requirement.

David