Hybrids

[Skiploder]

For that matter, lesser pastels (and plenty of other BP morph combos) could be called locality intergrades, as I have my suspicions that the founding individuals came from regionally separated locales of BPs.

For some reason, people don't seem to care about BP localities, and certainly there is no preference for western hognose snake localities. The latter is my biggest pet peeve, because the locality-based color variation in "normals" is huge, if the hobby cared about locality purity with western hoggies we could accomplish some seriously awesome projects. For the longest time, corn snake localities have been ignored as well, except for okeetees. I doubt most of the anti-intergrade guys even give a second thought to corn snake morphs that originate east of the Mississippi river vs corn snake morphs that originate west of the 'sippi. The only ones that people seem to care about are carpet pythons, GTPs, and boa constrictors.

Ah, you've touched on a pet peeve of mine.

I'm a big fan of localities. I love locality pits, locality drys, locality pythons and locality boas. The fact that a bull snake from Colorado may only attain 4' in length or that a Kankakee bull has a great pattern is worth preserving. Ocean County Pines can attain great natural yellow coloration and other localities can turn brick red. On the same token, I'm very frustrated that the captive pool of Louisiana Pines is suspect because someone in the not too distant past tried to "improve" on them.

Then again I love the look of the silver bullet bull, the tiger bull and the specifically line bred reds. I love the morphs but I'm saddened that they have become the focus.

Our hobby often suffers because there is not a balance between breeding for color and maintaining locality type. Australian antaresia and aspidites pythons are a prime example. Our gene pool is so mixed that half the people can't tell a locality stimsons from a children's. The wonderful variance in woma locality type is lost because of our obsession with producing something that is pleasing to our eye -all at the expense of countless years of evolution.

We're seeing the same thing happening with drys right now - people crossing cribo localities to produce a lemon head or a predominantly yellow corais. No focus on breeding true to localities. Our captive yellow and black tail populations are rapidly becoming designer snakes.......

Now let's be clear, I'm gonna repeat that I am not against morphs and not necessarily against hybrids. I'm just saddened that there seems to be more of a focus on creating an animal that pleases our eyes than appreciating the wide palette provided by nature.