Someone always tries to take it back to breeding montiors in captivity.

Well, SPECIFIC to taxonomy, captive breeding and husbandry has little or nothing to do with how monitors are named and classed at a scientific level. So, IMO, SPECIFIC to taxonomy, captive breeding is not an argument that has any relevance or significance to the debate at hand. That is cetainly not to say successful breeders could not provide an incredible opportunity to put to the test what scientists think they know about monitors. To the contrary, I believe they can and should.

But I must argue that the purpose of scientific classification of animals is not to make it easier for people to breed monitors, or anything else for that matter. To think or say so is to display a profound amount of arrogance in itself. The goal of scientific classification is to organize animals in a manner that demonstrates biological, geographical and physiological relationships. This can provide deeper understanding and key insights into so many far reaching areas such as basic biology and physiology, disease and treatment, extintion patterns and risk, impact of enviromental stress of species groups and how life cycles can provide insight to the bigger impact of the introduction of foreign pollutants and pathogens (indicator species); the list goes on.

Now, certainly if things were easier to follow and understand the impact on the captive monitor community would be huge. And it is not lost on me that with clearer, cleaner organization and an adherance to common rules and practices that are easy to understand, we would not have to figure out for ourselves what a particular seller means by somewhat general terms like "ball python" or "white throat monitor." If things were clearer, we could simply ask "what species." But I think it is very important for all of us to recognize that we attempting to apply a broad system to a specific purpose that doesn't exactly fit all too well.

So, my long winded point, I guess is if I am in need of some insight into what I am doing wrong, or simply might need to try differently for my captive savannah, forums like this and the pictures/posts that I see are just what I am looking for. But if I am curious to know biologically what the closest relative to a particular species is to possibly understand what crosses might occur NATURALLY in the wild, these forums are useless. If I want to know what symptomology and treatment of a certain malady might be, possibly because I keep a very rare species, knowing the toxonomy of that species may direct me to a similar and more commonly kept species for insight and information. I guess the best analogy I can draw is this; telling the scientific community to redo how they handle taxonomy because the general public has a hard time applying scientific names to the pet trade is like telling a surgeon to operate with a broadsword.

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