Aside from the species-specific and locale purists, we also annoy morph enthusiasts who work with other species. Imagine this: A lifelong colubrid enthusiast is walking around a herp expo and notices a Super Mojave. Thinks to himself “That’s kind of neat… A pale gray BP with kind of a dorsal stripe thing going on and a darker gray head.” So he asks “What is that?” The vendor along with all the BP enthusiasts gathered around the table proclaim: “BLUE EYED LEUCISTIC!!!”
What??? The only white scale on that snake’s body is on its belly... Leucistic??? Colubrid guy walks away annoyed and shaking his head.
How about our “Ghosts”? To the rest of the world a “Ghost” is a visual combo of axanthic and hypomelanistic. But BP people call our Hypo a “Ghost”. Whatever… It wasn’t really acknowledged by us until someone was about to make the BP combo of “Ghost” and axanthic. Then we had to acknowledge the issue so we decided to call the BP hypo axanthic the “True Ghost”. On the day we collectively accepted the name “True Ghost” did we then acknowledge all the other BP “Ghosts” were a lie? I thought about advertising some of our Hypo stuff from last year as “Lie Ghosts” but I didn’t think most would understand…
-Paul
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