as far as one of a kind snakes, the way this is dealt with in other species it that the animal can be entered as an 'unstandardized' breed. The owner of the snake, or owners of several snakes, would have to come up with a standard, and have it checked over by the judges and approved, and then they will be judged up to that standard.


h00blah as much as i love your enthusiasm and rational thinking, the voting thing won't work. That wouldn't make it a show where things are held to standards. As far as an online competition that would work wonderfully, and you could set up polls for people to vote. But for a real-time competition it would have to be pretty ridgid as far as standards and judges who are trained specifically to judge according to the standards, and not according to personal preference.

That is to say, can you imagine what would happen if the judging was left up to the crowd at a dog show?

And of course, animals would be sold and traded at these shows. What would the award ribbons mean to people? It would mean say there is a 'yellow' ball python, and the standard simply says 'this snake should be as yellow as possible' the ribbon that a champion snake wins says to everyone else 'look, i have put my snake up to a panel of judges, and it has been shown to be the most yellow snake out of all these snakes entered!' Does it mean that he's the best snake breeder in the world? No. But it does mean that their snakes are the most yellow snakes, and anyone looking for a beautiful yellow python, should look into the breeders lines.
It also wouldn't mean that other 'yellow' pythons wouldn't be sold either. In the mouse world, reds and yellows should be RED in colour, or extremely dark orange, but ideally red. Are there still tons of yellow and light orange mice out there, and people who love them and want them and seek them out? Of course! And there aren't mouseries which are going out of business because they aren't winning shows. That's nonsense.