Question:
Since an ebony chinchilla is all black, what is the difference between a homo ebony and a hetero ebony?


Answer:
the homo ebony is ALL black, including the belly
the hetero ebony is black with grey in it including a grey belly


Answer:
Ok the first picture is of Dew, our hetero ebony, isn't great, its from when we first got her home here with us, and you cant see her tummy. She really looks like a standard except her tummy is grey too, not quite as dark as the rest of her, but pretty close.
This is Xspresso. He's our Homo Ebony boy.
I don't know, someone probably has a better example of a hetero eb than the pic I have of Dew, but you get the gist of it...


Answer:
THANKS
THATS A GREAT HELP!!
BOB


Answer:
I find the whole hetero eb/standard w/ dirty belly distinction confusing. It seems to me that the only difference is the bloodlines. When bred to standards, what to hetero ebs produce? What about when they are bred to other hetero ebs, or homo ebs?


Answer:
When standards are bred to hetero ebs, you can get a standard, standard ebony carrier, and wide range of standard with eb influence. Ebony is a rather elusive gene, with no clear outcomes when it comes to breeding. It isn't really dominant, recessive, or accumulative. I know that doesn't clear anything up, but when you breed two hetero ebs, you can get standards to homo ebs. Same when you breed them to homo ebs.


Answer:
So if you bred a standard w/ a dirty belly to a homo eb, & the babies were grey with black ticking all over, you wouldn't know whether you had homo ebs or standards?


Answer:
It is recommended that if you have any big beautiful standards that have a busse (dirty) belly, that they be bred to ebs. Because ebs have grey to black bellies, the "dirtyness" is lost in the eb. There is wide range of ebs, from grey with very little eb to completely black but a grey with a dirty belly with no ebony in it is just that, a dirty bellied standard.


Answer:
Sorry,one last question: but you couldn't tell the diff by just *looking* @ the het eb vs dirty belly standard?


Answer:
The untrained eye probably couldn't. That's one reason why history/pedigrees are good. I have a hetero eb vc and he's very standard looking with a very grey belly. Clint can't tell he's standard but he has black spots on the base of his paws and other signs he's eb.