Black Night

What Black Night looks like

Super dark melanistic

Black Night is a polygenic (line-bred) trait that produces extreme melanistic coloration. The goal is a completely jet-black leopard gecko with no pattern or lighter areas. Like Tangerine, Black Night is controlled by multiple genes and has no simple Mendelian inheritance ratio. Expression is achieved through intensive selective breeding over many generations, crossing the darkest animals together. Black Night hatchlings often show some pattern that is progressively "swallowed up" by darkness as the animal matures. IMPORTANT: Black Night coloration is significantly influenced by ambient temperature. Cooler temperatures enhance darkness, and some unscrupulous sellers keep animals at sub-optimal low temperatures to make them appear darker. When moved to normal temperatures, the black coloration may fade. As a heavily line-bred morph, Black Night animals can have reduced fertility, slow growth, and health issues due to the intense inbreeding required to fix the polygenic trait.

How to identify it: Black Night: Ideally a solid jet-black gecko with no pattern, lighter areas, or spots visible. In practice, most show some variation. Lighter bellies, residual spots, or brown undertones. Darkness varies with temperature (cooler = darker). Hatchlings may show pattern that fades with age. Quality varies enormously between lines. True "full black" animals are extremely rare and command premium prices. Reduced fertility and health issues (kinked tails, poor egg quality) are common due to inbreeding.

How Black Night is inherited

Black Night follows a polygenic inheritance pattern, carried on the Black Night allele (locus BlackNight).