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Posted by Serpwidgets on August 02, 2002 at 01:36:48:
In Reply to: Re: The Official Standard of Corn Snake Morphology... posted by reuben on August 02, 2002 at 01:06:16:
I'm not talking about a price guide. I'm simply talking about a morph guide. Maybe I should have been more explicit about that.
Also, I know little to nothing about publishing a book. I'd most likely be just another customer.
There are specific genes that go into the making of specific morphs, and that's one thing the book would define:
"Amelanism is a trait that, when expressed, causes the removal of black pigmentation." Then it could be added that acceptable alternate names for this trait are (stuff like "albino" and "red albino" or whatever)
The proven traits are pretty easy to define because when crossing any two corns carrying or expressing the same trait, they will produce a statistically predictable set of offspring. There are given ways to "prove out" specific traits which IMO are at least as valid as linguistics would be for a dictionary.
So then the combinations could be defined as such: the "butter" morph is, specifically, a cornsnake expressing both the Amelanism and Caramel traits. Period.
Obviously, there are more subtle forces at work in Okeetee and Miami and other morphs, but as I said, if the definitions are reasonably compatible with the market, they will be accepted.
The big difference is that those standards will not change over the years simply because someone at a show wants to make a few extra bucks. IMO it would halt the "drift" that's been happening as the first guy takes something a bit less than an Okeetee and sells it as Okeetee... then the guy at the next table sees that one and says, "mine are almost that good, I can tack on an extra 5 bucks and sell mine as Okeetees" and the next thing you know we get totally generic cornsnakes being sold as Okeetees. I've seen it before. And then there's the people selling "het for okeetee, miami, and candycane," and all kinds of other ridiculous stuff.
A standard, once accepted, would give more people the "authority" to keep in check the people who are making up BS names and mislabeling stuff.
Otherwise I can go to a show and sell anything I want as Okeetee. You can disagree until you're blue in the face, but it's simply your opinion against mine. And guess what, if I'm standing behind the table, who's gonna believe you? ;-)
