Wild Morphs

[Malum Argenteum]

@Gio, just to clarify I was just giving input to the general topic under discussion, not attempting to contradict you or anyone.

If anything, this is the idea I was working with: "re-examining how we think of “captivity” insomuch as it is or can be an idyllic form of nature with special benefits eg: perfect consistent weather, no chance of predation, etc - technically you could say that’s “unnatural” but i would argue that it is and it is not "

You're right about the semantics issue. 'Normal' can refer to statistical likelihood, or to a genetic allele ('normal' vs 'albino'), but in the morph vs wildtype discussions, especially when the negative 'abnormal' is used, it usually has an evaluative aspect that is essential to the argument being made. Heck, the word 'normative' means 'evaluative' or 'prescriptive'. 'Normal' is a messy term, and I should have avoided it.

"From an evolutionary standpoint, the strongest, best equipped are the survivors." Well, sort of; it has nothing essential to do with strength or equipment (unless these terms are used very broadly), it has to do only with reproductive success. The 'best equipped' in the current captive environment are the morph animals. Being a morph animal makes it much more likely (in the BP case anyway; other species have different adaptive pressures) that the animal will successfully reproduce since hardly anyone breeds 'wild-type'. 'Wild-type' isn't adaptive in captivity, relative to most morphs. Relative success at passing on genes is evolutionary fitness.

My point was largely about the fact that evolutionary pressures go on in captivity, too, and at a far greater speed and with much easier-to-see outcomes. Conservation/zoo breeding discussions and academic discussions understand that evolutionary pressures are caused by human intervention, both intentional and inadvertent, both direct and indirect, both in the wild and in captive populations and in populations that don't fit either of those categories very cleanly, but don't necessarily make the strong sort of 'natural vs unnatural' distinction that crops up in casual discussions like those among herp keepers.

A readable book on some of these deeper topics of adaptation is Dawkin's 'The Selfish Gene', which unrelatedly but somewhat amusingly coined the term 'meme'.

Cool discussion, at any rate.