Phil,
I know that what your are claiming is all true. Thru Cal Zoo in the 90's, labeled as MOCHA, etc, etc. But I don’t think that just claiming that the MOCHA is not a SCORIA is the correct way to go about this. MOCHA may not be a SCORIA and SCORIA may not be a MOCHA, but, if you take a real close subjective look at lateral patterns, tail pattern characteristics, the head pattern, and overall outward appearance, the MOCHA and the SCORIA DO resemble each other quite a bit other than color. Keep in mind to that some of the SCORIA's that have been produced are not all bright orange like the one pictured on SALMONBOA.com which is currently being displayed as the "IDEAL SPECIMEN". In fact, some of the SCORIA’s to date are much similar to the MOCHA in coloration. We are probably also going to find out in the coming years that the SCORIA has a very random pattern and coloration much like Jaguar Carpet pythons do. This could very likely lead to SCORIA's producing MOCHA's at some point down the line once more of them become available. I for one would love to see what the SCORIA gene does when combined with the ORANGE HYPO, SALMON HYPO, T pos, JUNGLE, ARABESQUE, etc, etc. You get the point. And you can probably bet darn well the Rich has already started down that path.

OK. Here’s some real controversy. It may also be that the MOCHA happened long enough ago that it was labeled differently than it is labeled today which would really mean that the SCORIA is actually a MOCHA. Since it sounds like the Phenotype MOCHA can't be found at thsi point we may never know. Make any sense?

All that said, I know this is really far fetched, but couldn't the MOCHA have been the "Founder SCORIA" and the gene just kind of got lost in the shuffle over the years. I mean, the MOCHA was an import right? That means that something produced it. Which means that there were probably other animals produced that carried a partial gene set but may not have had the same outward appearance. Some of these animals may never have been collected, some of them may have made their way elsewhere and some of them just might have been collected and imported later, possibly years later in farm raised stock possibly. And just maybe by some coincidence, two animals that carried the correct genes finally hooked up to produce the SCORIA. Maybe the mutant gene that produced both MOCHA and SCORIA has been passed around by normal animals for a few years and had to undergo exactly the same set of external conditions to mutate to the MOCHA and SCORIA results. Or just maybe, the MOCHA could have been bred with another animal which didn't end up producing the results that were expected. The resulting offspring may have had a perfectly normal appearance in which case, in the late 90's all of the offspring probably would have been sold off as normal. One of these offspring could have then ended producing animals with the mutant SCORIA/MOCHA gene which finally ended up breeding together to produce what we now know as the SCORIA. But then again, maybe both MOCHA and SCORIA are ultra low probability animals. You know, the 1/128 variety. Further breeding trials will definitely be done in the years to come which will either prove or disprove anything we have to say at this point.

The real test, which is probably not going to happen but would provide the easy answer would be to find the MOCHA, do DNA testing on both it and the SCORIA and see what the results say. They should be able to do DNA testing from a shed skin of each of the animals, right? That would surely shine some light on the two morphs.

Not bustin your chops, just pointing out other possibilities

Chris

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