"New" Morphs...

There needs to be some sort of governing group that looks into claims of new morphologies before the breeder starts It is really annoying to see every breeder coming up with their own special "line" or claiming every slightly unique animal is a new morph. It makes an already confusing situation even more ridiculous. If you breed a yellow dragon to a red dragon, it is not a "Banana Rainbow Sherbert Splash" or some other stupid concoction of fanciful names.

It's misleading and in many ways fraudulent to market your line as unique. Especially when the breeders in question are on their first generation of hatchlings and don't seem to grasp the genetics.

Originally Posted by Wildthings

There needs to be some sort of governing group that looks into claims of new morphologies before the breeder starts It is really annoying to see every breeder coming up with their own special "line" or claiming every slightly unique animal is a new morph. It makes an already confusing situation even more ridiculous. If you breed a yellow dragon to a red dragon, it is not a "Banana Rainbow Sherbert Splash" or some other stupid concoction of fanciful names.

It's misleading and in many ways fraudulent to market your line as unique. Especially when the breeders in question are on their first generation of hatchlings and don't seem to grasp the genetics.

It happens all the time with crested geckos, and annoys the crap out of me, so I feel your pain.

This has been happening for a long time.

I remember getting into a discussion with someone over ball pythons. At the time he stated that there were 42 distinct genetic types of the ball pythons available. I told him that it was pretty much impossible for that to be true, as when the 42nd one was suspected of being a new genetic type, it would take an extremely long time to test breed it against the other 41 to make certain it wasn't simply a variation of an existing gene type. And the frenzy of ball python morphs just hadn't been around nearly long enough for that to have taken place. With new ball python morphs bringing in some hefty prices at that time, there was a definite siren song in the air for people to be footloose and fancy free with new labels for even the most minor differences in an animal. Heck, I can remember walking around the Daytona Beach expo years ago looking at table upon table of differently labelled ball pythons sporting price tags between $10K and $50K, and for the most part, I couldn't see any differences between most of them. At least not any that seemed significant in any way other than natural variation in minor coloration and patterns.

But quite frankly, when telling a lie (even in ignorance) about something earns the liar more money, it's pretty hard for some people to resist that temptation.

Apparently people WERE willing to spend big bucks for stuff like that, so who am I to say who was smart and who wasn't......

Banana Rainbow Sherbert Splash

Now I'm thirsty for something icy, sweet and refreshing.

Originally Posted by Wildthings

It's misleading and in many ways fraudulent to market your line as unique. Especially when the breeders in question are on their first generation of hatchlings and don't seem to grasp the genetics.

I couldn't agree more. We are seeing more and more of this lately I've noticed. It's disappointing to see some of the older breeders doing this. I would have thought this was more of a noobie thing.

I shy away from doing business with people who are too big for their britches and this scenario fits the bill.

Apparently my post stepped on some toes and I received a rude email from a breeder on this forum.