Black and White is Outta Sight!

To create a bold black and white leopard gecko, we knew we had to start with two of our favorite morphs—the TUG Snow and the Halloween Mask. The TUG Snow is a great snow line with a lot of white in the head and body. We have found this snow line to be a fun line to work with because it doesn’t have a super form and you can line breed for patterns. We like the hypo-snow version, as well as those with lots of spotting.

The second morph that we have come to love over the years is the bold Halloween mask. The head, or mask, has bold random markings while the body has aberrant markings that are often multi-chromatic—having black, grey, brown, green, and red. As HMs mature, the bold markings on the head and body become more erratic. Like the snow, this is a strong genetic trait that you can line breed for pattern.

(Click images to enlarge)

Our end goal was to produce some extreme bold black and white geckos. We have seen that realized over the last two years and have produced some amazing white and blacks with a ton of bolding. These are fun!

Now for something we didn't expect. Several years ago we hatched out an interesting gecko from this project. We named him Litebrite. Litebrite had some nice symmetrical bold head markings as a juvenile gecko. Like many of our hatchlings, he also hatched black and white. He exhibits a common characteristic of TUG snows—like a prowling cat, he keeps his body low to the ground. We thought he was interesting, so we kept him around to watch him change. We never would have guessed how much he would transform over the years. His pattern became so erratic and he had some very interesting speckles on his neck and shoulders.

Of course, we wanted to have more geckos like Litebrite, so we breed him back to some of our TUG Snow HM crosses and he has produced several interesting geckos. Like Litebrite, many of these geckos have random bold patterns and speckles throughout their heads and bodies. This is what we were hoping for.

If you are interested in joining the fun, you can pick up your own bold black and white geckos here. If you are interested in one from Litebrite's line, we will be offering a limited number soon. Please inquire.

By the way, lurking somewhere in this project is a Tremper albino gene. Our original TUG snow carries it and we have seen it pop up here and there over the years.