Colorful Mosaics

Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum

Help Support Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

CodysChinchillas

<- Pooper Scooper
Joined
May 22, 2012
Messages
48
Location
Maine, USA
Now, I don't know if this happens, but do people ever get crazy colored mosaics? Or is it even possible? Like say you're breeding a bv to a beige, will you get a black chinchilla with beige spots? Or any other colors besides grey/black/white? Just curious if any of you breeders or owners know of any of these "morphs".
 
There are some what we would call "extreme mosaics" but they are all classified as mosaics for the lay person. To be a mosaic there has to be an expression of the white gene. There is not a tortishell, brindle, calico, dapple, roan, etc gene in chinchillas that you might see in cats, dogs, horses etc. You would never get a bv with beige spots because of the way the genes express themselves. Lots of people have white chins with dark grey or black or even beige spots and there are several "half and half" chins (that is a descriptive term to help you visualize) where head is white and body is grey or vice versa.
 
I think grey+black+white look awesome if they are all on one chin!!

like this:
 

Attachments

  • 1.jpg
    1.jpg
    69.9 KB · Views: 92
  • 2.jpg
    2.jpg
    67.8 KB · Views: 71
woolala, that's one of the prettiest chinchilla's I've ever seen! Great pictures!

DoGooder
 
As VolunteerChins mentioned a simple white mosaic is genetically the same regardless of the phenotype expression. However there are multiple genetic types of "white" chinchillas eg: pink whites, ebony whites, white violets, white sapphires, TOV whites, etc. Pink whites and tan whites will have brown markings, where as white mosaics and ebony whites will have light to dark gray and/or black markings. TOV whites tend to have more of a veiling of gray/black covering their face and/or back. White violets have violet markings and white sapphiers have sapphire markings.

The phenotype of each genetic type can range vastly from almost pure white to almost all gray, black, beige, tan, violet, sapphire with slight white markings. Genetically though a pure white pink white is the same as an all beige pink white with a white tipped tail.

Cheryl
 
I have to admit it would be pretty cool to have a calico colored chin! lol but I love the ones like Zorro!! I had one of my original ones looked almost identical to him!
 
Back
Top