WTF? Short tailed gecko??

[ChizoReptiles]

Yesterday i hatched a cute little gecko with short tail
actually i think its pretty cute lol
did it happened to anybody in the past?

 

[mörten]

Aww that so adorable

 

[favrielle]

I'd say technically that's a deformity, but still very very cute. Is she/he otherwise acting healthy so far?

 

[ChizoReptiles]

he's looking good.. but he's only 1 day old, i need to see in the future what goes on with him
i have a friend over here in Israel which also had this season a gecko just like this (but tremper sunglow lol, mine is a poss hypo het bell), and he's doing great

 

[DrCarrotTail]

I hatched a very similar one out last week. I asked a few folks and was told it was most likely due to inbreeding too far. It could also come from incubation temps and/or supplementation of the parents. Not sure if there's any way to figure out exactly what the cause is. Would love to hear other opinions!

 

[stager]

Could be temp spikes in incubator

 

[ChizoReptiles]

the temperture in the incubator is just fine, all the other geckos are healthy, and the parents are way to far from each other to call this inbreeding

 

[bfb345]

You never know. Although I would lean more towards the inbreeding thing because that could make the gene that controls development of the tail to do extreme things like become short or long

 

[B&B Geckos]

I hatched a very similar one out last week. I asked a few folks and was told it was most likely due to inbreeding too far. It could also come from incubation temps and/or supplementation of the parents. Not sure if there's any way to figure out exactly what the cause is. Would love to hear other opinions!

Unfortunately we cannot be sure whether some traits are caused by temperature, vitamin deficiency, or genetics. The only way to know is to test breed. This is not only time, energy and resource consuming, but dangerous because by producing more animals with a certain trait we could be contributing to the frequency of detrimental genes in the shallow captive gecko gene pool. Imo geckos such as these also can make great pets, but should not be bred. Please see the following horror story ( scroll down to post# 29).
http://geckoforums.net/f85-ethics-forum/9844.htm

"Phillip and I thought the same thing. Years ago, one of our first leopard geckos (I think that he was literally our 6th) had a curly tail; not just kinked, I mean CURLY! And I thought that it was the neatest thing. His name was Hades and he supposedly from the Urban Gecko line (which I don't doubt because his color was absolutely beautiful), so we decided to breed him to another bright hypo that we picked up at a show. We only bred him because we didn't know any better at the time, and even now we're dealing with the consequences.

More than half of his babies had curly/nubbed tails and we thought that they were adorable, little tiny curly tailed hatchlings... we soon came to find out that the curly tail gene also had the genetic line-up for internal problems. Some were eating, but not pooping... sadly enough we ended up having to put a few down because they were simply going to blow up due to the fact that they couldn't poop. It was horrible and I felt terrible about it. So, we decided not to breed him anymore.

The next year, we decided to keep one of his hatchlings who had no curly tail, no kinks, no eyelid problems, she was eating/pooping great, etc. We decided to keep to breed because she was so breathtaking. We figured if there were not physical signs, she probably wouldn't carry the deformed gene which seemed to be genetically dominant due to the large number of "deformed" babies from the year before. Boy were we wrong... again. Fortunately enough only one of her babies came out deformed, but he is doing extremely well: eating, pooping, he grew to full size before his clutchmate, and to make it worse (for us anyway) he is the most beautiful vibrant color orange gecko I have ever personally witnessed! Maybe I'll post pictures of him: he has a humpback and a curly tail, a great personality and incredible color. But, unfortunately he is deformed and can never be bred..."