Saw my first leatherback!

[Monkey]

Or mix I suspect, but he was almost perfectly smooth, in PETCO of all places. What's the odds for that one? I was so tempted to grab him and run!
I have almost never seen leatherbacks before and that was the first one I saw in real life. How common are they?

 

[dmglakewood]

From what I've researched they are quite rare. They have no idea what causes if. I guess some breeders are trying to figure it out but nothing yet. Even more rare then that is the silkback. It's what you get when you breed 2 leatherback beardies

They have no scales at all and resemble a salamander I think

 

[gb546]

 

[spyder79]

Um the leatherback gene is well known and well categorized and is not in the least a "rare" morph. They pop up from time to time in places like petco and pet smart due to the breeders that these companies use breed at such a high scale volume they just throw together groups of X amount of beardies and barely even look at what bloodlines they are pushing to the stores (hince you periodically seeing a accidental leather or smoothie in a chain store).

The leather gene can be co-dominant or recessive and there are two distinct lines (american smoothie, typically recessive/ and the italian leather typically much smoother than an american smoothie and typically from a co-dom line). If you breed to leathers together you will get a percentage of silks(the picture posted above). I believe there are people working to see if breeding an italian leather to a american smoothie results in silks but I do not believe that has been proven yet.

 

[Monkey]

Ahhh Thank you for clarifying

I was surprised and to me they seemed rare so I was curious

 

[foto69man]

Blood Bank produces some nice leatherbacks...

http://www.bloodbankdragons.com

 

[munchkins9802]

Tom (wolfman) has a gorgeous leather back!