Just a thought....................

[Bluebonnet Herp]

normals have some immaterial value in that every healthy BP deserves the same kind of respect and care, and every healthy BP has he potential to be a really great pet that people can become really attached to. in that sense they are all valuable, morph or not.


but when talking about MONETARY value, its still correct to say that they are worth next to nothing. so when some people say things like "normals are worthless" or "try breeding normals first, that way you wont lose much when it doesnt work out", and other people get upset, maybe its just a misunderstanding?

and to say that for breeding, normals are worthless, is also quite correct. it may sound rude, but that doesnt make it untrue. the thing is that for normals, big exporters in Ghana or Benin pretty much set the global market price. and that price is just too low for any breeder that requires heat tape and thermostats and incubators and who has to pay employees 15 dollars per hour to compete with. you need to sell combos and morphs at premium prices in order to break even. depending on how efficient a breeder operates, every normal hatched may imply an immediate financial loss, so they try their best to avoid it by breeding morph combo to morph combo.

You hit the nail on the head. While no animal should be disrespected and treated as disposable, normals are, financially, least valuable. As supply and demand goes, normals have hardly any value due to the surplus of animals out there. They're probably one of the easiest snakes to find and obtain.
It seems things usually go wrong when there's a misunderstanding of wording. (Or, god forbid, greed gets the best of someone and that does evolve into some form of abuse or neglect, but that's another subject.) Most of the 'higher' members here- those who run businesses breeding animals- often talk from a business point of view, and pet owners tend to misunderstand that as degrading any value of the animal. Assuming everyone here actually values life, it's safe to say that we all respect the animal as is, it's just that everyone holds their different perspectives within the hobby depending on what they do. That's just what separates a pet keeper from a breeder.