I'll hit the question right away... How light determines a platinum? And what other features or markings help identify it? Of all the colours, I know the least of platinums.
Friends who see our gliders and know some about them always want to start throwing colour labels on them. Hubby does it too. In my mind, there's: grey, dark grey, light grey, leu, mosaic, red. Lol They're all just different shades of grey to me unless they REALLY stand out as something else. A few people are insisting that we have 3 different colour gliders, and Hubby wants to believe it I think.


Story:
Hubby hasn't seen Brantley or Salem in a few days, as they don't get up 'till about 1 am, and he has to get to bed around 11. Last night I made my boys wake up around 9 to feed them mealies while we did some pouch swapping and my husband said "Dang, they're dark! I didn't realize that until we brought home Tachi. (Bongo's new name) You think they could be black beauties, or at least Salem?"

Salem's grey fur is a very dark grey, so he does appear much darker than most standard greys, however he doesn't have any extra or more prominent black bars, so I just call him a grey.

Brantley's grey fur (what little he has) is also darker, but I say Brantley is of the red series (cinnamon.) His entire body has a red/brown tint, and his stripe is RED. It's like a rust colour. His white on his belly is even more white than Salem's though. I'm pretty sure it's not staining.

Tachi is a WFB, but his grey is light, light, light. Even his stripe is very light on his head, then there's a break of no stripe on his "neck" area, then the stripe starts again, even lighter. His tail doesn't even match his body. Lol It's a tan colour, and it's "flat."

I told Hubby my boys weren't black beauties, if anything, his was platinum, but that I call them all "grey" even though I'm convinced Brantley isn't.


So I'm now curious, where do YOU draw the line for platinums?


This is Tachi.. My camera makes all my boys a bit darker, but I still think he's just a unique grey. A few people insist he's platinum, Salem is black beauty, and Brantley is Cinnamon.

It got me thinking about how to determine colours though.

Tachi is a white face - he lacks the ear bar and generally wf and wfbs' are lighter in body color. Some 100% leu gets are also very light even if they're not wf and mosaics can be TRUE platinum mosaics or platinum colored mosaics(as some start to powder out/lighten but are NOT born platinum colored).

Plats look really different, especially as joeys. They have a very thin to no stripe and its just a very different tint.

Time will tell Brantley and Salem's true colors - chances are they are just variations of greys :)

Summer....here's a recent pic of my new twin which is a WFB alongside one of my standard greys. I think you can see the slight difference in your little guy and my little guy.... but I do have a standard grey glider that is a good shade darker than my others, but she is not a black beauty...just a darker shade of standard grey....(I'll post a pic of the whole gang but I'm not sure if you'll be able to make out any differences in my greys)




Yeah, if you look closely at at noses... tip top of the screen is my Female WFB Aerwen, Down to the right is my Male WFB (you can see his bald spot) then down below him is Kodah.... now go back up to Aerwen then down to her left is my little Ariana... the camera doesn't do it justice but if you look at noses between Kodah & Ari you can see the difference in the light grey...hers is much darker.

Sorry, I don't know a thing about Plats!

Ari's nose is very dark, and the one on the very bottom left looks extremely dark too; very close to Salem. What beautiful gliders you guys have :) I don't think I could ever grow tired of looking at suggies. ^_^

I don't know much about platinums either, and I've been around gliders in some way for a little over ten years, and have looked into all the colours a bit. That's why it gets me when people walk in and start "colour coding" my gliders, as I call it. It got me curious on platinums though, so I'll probably research them more the next few days. Haha

I'm also waiting on Tachi's colour to "even out." He's only been here a few days so he is still adjusting to a better diet, cleaner cage, and proper exercise. You wouldn't believe the cage he was in or what he was eating!
Brantley & Salem I believe are their true colours.

You're good! That other darker one you picked out is Arianas biological sister Mala.

And as I said, I'm not really "color savvy" but through reading many threads mainly on FB.... there was a recent one on the debate of a new joey being an albino or not...but with that I have picked up on some breeders "picking" the color of their joey not only from color, because as you said...for example, there can be a slight difference between a WF & a WFB and it can depend on "who's" looking as to what they see. I have found that many, when they are on the fence so to speak will pick the color depending on the lines of the parents. Of course that takes great knowledge of lineage and the odds of said joey producing "X color" when it produces joeys in the future.

It's all foreign to me but fascinating at the same time. I just have to say I'm glad I'm not a breeder!

Platinums have a stripe that isn't gray. It is more of a taupe.

My Platinum boy, Neutron is also a White face. His brother, Harcourt is a white face, who is just as light as your white face. But next to his brother, he looks quite dark. It isn't really about "picking what you see." Some colors are pretty definite. I mean, a White Face is or is not, it isn't subjective.

My wfb, Taz, is a leu het....he is a lighter grey color like a plat but has a gray/black stripe. Kodi, my silver belle plat, looks like a light silver with a silver stripe but my Haley (sp) plat, Neko, is also wf and looks a lot like Taz with a lighter stripe. Neko has a red tint to his fur, mostly in his stripe. I'm actually in process of adding their pics to my albums now lol.....work in progress...

Resa

I love learning about the colours, but I don't think I'd ever breed for colours. That's a lot of math, staring at lineage, and random chance. Lol

& valkyriemome, those platinums you never have to question.
He's a gorgeous boy :)

Our WF definitely has a black/grey stripe.
I think what I've noticed is our friends who have spent time with Brantley & Salem now want to call Tachi a plat. Our friends who met Tachi before my boys woke up want to call them BBs. It seems to be all about which they saw first or were used to.