What does heterozygous, homozygous, recessive, co-dominant and dominant mean?
Heterozygous, homozygous, recessive, co-dominant and dominant are terms used to describe genetics or traits. You will hear and see these terms quite frequently when discussing ball python morphs. Let’s take an Albino ball python for example. It is a homozygous ball python because it received the Albino gene from both its mother and father. A het (heterozygous) Albino will contain one and only one Albino gene from either the father or mother. Since it received only one Albino gene, it will not look Albino but it will contain a gene for the Albino trait. It will look like an ordinary normal ball python. This is what is considered a recessive trait because you cannot visually look at a ball python to determine if it’s het for a particular morph. On the other hand, the co-dominate and dominate morphs are different than recessive morphs because you can visually look at the offspring from a parent and determine which ball python’s carry the sought after gene. Some ball pythons that come to m
