A Worthwhile Rant

[Mikoh4792]

Thought this person made some good points about the situation boas and carpet pythons are in currently in herpetoculture

Here's my rant for the day. I haven't done one in a while, so I'm due.
It's the word "normal". I don't like it. Seriously. Define what it means in herpetoculture in general. With the ball pythons, it works, as there are no subspecies, and noone there is even interested in locales. It means it is not a morph (no single gene mutations). That is what I have always used it in reference to.

Where the term really gets me is when used in with boa constrictors (Boa constrictor sspp) & carpet pythons (Morelia spilota sspp). Both complexes are full of questions like "what type of boa is this?" and "what is my carpet python?". It gets worse when it's "Is this a Suriname boa or a normal?" or "Is this a Jungle carpet or a normal?". They're both complex species groups, with a number of subspecies and intergrade zones. And, mostly due to morphs, they're all being bred together. Started with wanting to breed Central American Hypo boas to everything with a cloaca in Boas, and Jaguar carpets to everything with a cloaca in carpets.

Let me state that I am not actually a "purist". I own carpet crosses, hell I own carpondros. I don't own any crossed boas anymore, I don't even own any locale crosses of the same ssp. So I am not against the idea of crossing morphs. I just like to know what they are, and people to represent them honestly, which is becoming all but impossible, I'll take boas for example, since this has been going on longer with them. All hypomelanistic Boa constrictors are from Central American locales. So that means, there is no such thing as a Hypo Colombian boa. They are crosses. And approximately half the litters are hypo, and half "normal" in any hypo x non hypo pairing. If it's a Colombian x Central American cross (or any other locale cross), you have mutts. Som morphs, some not. Most of these crosses are then given the term "normal", or "normal red tail", or "Colombian red tail". I've seen pairings of central American hypos to Suriname/Guyana BCC, with the non hypos wholesaled off to the large flippers, like Seigal, Underground, Big apple, LLL, etc, and what are they sold off as usually? You got it, normal Colombian boas, when there isn't a single drop of blood from a Colombian BCI in the animals. Then you add other morphs, and other sspp, all crossed together, and all the normals are just dumped off, crosses of sometimes more localities and sspp than you could even count.

IMHO, this species complex is the closest we have come to domesticating a snake. Taking all these wonderful wild type sspp & localities of animals, and just mish-mashing them together into one vague, indistinguishable "normal" snake. All marketed as "normals". They aren't. I'm attaching a picture of an actual Colombian locale Boa constrictor imperator (BCI). This is selectively bred bloodline, and obviously there is allot of variation in these animals, they certainly don't all look the same. But, the vast majority of the "normal" boas are all starting to look similar to each other, that is pretty far from any natural form if you look closely. So, anything but "normal", if in any way normal were to refer to any animal that were to be found in the wild on the planet. And once people start asking "is this a Suriname or a normal?", we are all admitting that "normals" are completely unidentifiable mutts, since a Surinamese BCC isn't a morph, just a wild type locality.The same is happening in carpets. Mashing up every morph and subspecies, breeding every jag to anything with a cloaca.