It's a bummer your animals in the UK are having to be under such scrutiny. I guess we take things for granted over here in the US. There are so many people who breed only local animals, and wouldn't even THINK about out-crossing to another locality bloodline, much less something outside of the same species/sub-species. I know when you are dealing with ANY animal within your own breeding program, after a few generations you start to develop a "look" to the specimen. For instance, in quarter race horses, you can always tell a horse that is 1-2 generations from Easy Jet, because they all have the same head... maybe, the breeding programs in the UK has developed the "suspect" animals within the species and not really out-crossed as much as you think? Maybe you are right, and breeders are just trying to develop something that looks "cool". There are all kinds of people who are in the breeding circles for different reasons. You're right about all the morphs, as opposed to the natural patterning. It's just so much fun waiting on eggs to hatch and see what is going to come out of them, as opposed to a clutch of non-morphs where you know what they're going to look like. AND, it is unnecessary to produce animals that are unmarketable. These days, if a snake doesn't have a jillion different possible morphs, they are really hard to get rid of. When I got my first bull, I was looking for a plain old bull...I ended up blindly getting a really nice bred kingsville red, and now I have nothing except for him and one female that aren't at LEAST triple morphs, and up to quint morphs. Of course there's always the draw to produce that new something that hasn't been produced yet.

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