Koghis Melanistic is one of the best looking leachianus available at the moment on the market. Few data are available about these animals, unclear are the origins, unclear is the why they born completely black and unknown is why sometimes from koghis non melanistic hatch a melanistic one.
My personal definition of “melanistic” leachianus is a gecko that hatch “jet black” (completely black) and is visually different from every other “Dark Morph”.
After hatching jet black they are used to stay black for some time (one month or two) then they begin changing color with day\night and due to temperature and humidity.
Leachianus do not stay the same color forever, are not snakes. Remember that these animals in their country of origin are called “chameleon” (chamaleon) , because they change colours and are so much mimetic. Melanistic can be fired or unfired too, so they can be very dark if fired to pale grey if unfired.
Melanistic animals, like other leachianus, enter a phase of their life that I call “the grey phase” , from 3 months one to 6-7 month old. They tend to lose their color, but is only a moment of their life. As they grow they change color again.
Baby mel can have really nice colors as they hatch. Some from my own “Red Devil” line are going to become really stunners.
Speaking about color , melanistic animals are not completely black, never. they can be very dark but they HAVE rows , spots, stripes that are darker due to the excess of melanin. Sometimes stripes are very dark, sometimes tend to be violet or even red.
Melanistic hatch jet black, and when fired are darker, a lot darker. Hear a comparison with a “melanistic” Yate that is a different animal, if ever “true genetically melanistic”.
“Dark morph” was a term used to distinguish the two form of Mt. Koghis animals. On Mt. Koghis was found only one very dark animal and one with pattern. So they called the dark one “dark morph”. This term should be used only for the koghis locale, but is not correct too. As soon as only ONE animal was found and next bred probably to a patterned one from the same locality we have all the koghis with pattern. Than Koghis was split in Troeger (less pattern and bigger) and Friedel (more pattern and smaller) .
Today we call “dark morph” any dark animal as a Poindimie or a Yate or cross between them.
There are different colors in melanistic animals, some have a nice striped pattern
There are some very dark ones too
Sometimes some get a lot of pattern that can become color red
Sometimes they can become purple
Here a super gallery of my melanstic adults.
Is not that easy to distinguish a melanistic baby or subadult from a non mel . You should look at the bars, are never bright white . And you should look at the line between nostrils and eyes.
About het mel, a selection of photos that can help you to detect the difference between the mel and the non mel .
