Aussie Finch Forum

Hi guys,
I found this little man in with my caged wild-types. There is absolutely no way a domestic got in, as my domestics are on a different property. These guys have been caged indoors since July (40f, 40m), not breeding, in a room with a skylight, as well as lighting on a 16:8 photoperiod. He's an adult (2+ years old), and was banded as a bub, when he did not show any different colouration. I'm not sure if he looked like this when he was caught, as someone else caught them all.
He is 5th generation wild-type, and no domestics have ever been housed in the same area. Is he melanistic, or a spontaneous blackface mutation? No others look like him, apart from a second male who is showing the same black markings on the face (between the teardrop and beak), but not the dramatic black elsewhere.

It is a Blackbody which are Dominant .

Look out Niki ur Wild Types are infested with Mutations. Whats next a BC? It will b out there waiting for the 2 right birds to link up. Now u can start ur own Wild Type Blackbody. Good luck.

AMCA26 wrote:Look out Niki ur Wild Types are infested with Mutations. Whats next a BC? It will b out there waiting for the 2 right birds to link up. Now u can start ur own Wild Type Blackbody. Good luck.

Of course mutations are out there ....but if they are easily seen or such they are easy pickings for predators..hence why they dont propergate for the benefit of the species...well thats how I was taught in school many many moons ago..

He doesn't have the red eyes like the pure normals, do your other wild types have red eyes?

nswchainsaw wrote:It is a Blackbody which are Dominant .

If it is a dominant mutation then it is extremely strange for it to appear spontaneously in a population of normals. Could it be another black mutation that is recessive? The only other thing would be outside genetic input.

Point taken, uraeginthus, However, some species are more prone to spontaneous mutations, dominant or other, for reasons which are not understood. Hence, we have more than 600 gouldian mutations or combinations of mutations and a similar number for zebbies, but no double bar and few parrot finch mutations, despite the close relations of those finches.
So it is perhaps less surprising for a zebbie to throw a new mutation than it would be for most other species. Especially if, as I imagine, Niki breeds many hundreds of birds from diverse stock in the course of her research...

Hi Matty,we do have a double bar mutation,cinnamon sex linked mutation which was caught in the wild in SE Qld. Craig

Okay, no worries.
Still one double bar mutation versus hundreds of different flavours of zebbies.

Brooksy wrote:He doesn't have the red eyes like the pure normals, do your other wild types have red eyes?

Sorry I ment to say He, dam predicted text