Reptile & Amphibian Forums

To those people who morph animals (for no good reason other than monetary gain), please, please, please leave "our" anacondas alone. The blood line of captive boas, burms and retics are pretty well corrupted by morphers. If I were to buy a burm or retic nowadays, who knows, if I bred it, the babies could come out morphed. What's really ironic to me, is that the only "morphs" that look any good are the albinos, which are natural "morphs", but even nature usually weeds them out pretty fast. But I have to admit an albino burm or retic is a pretty beautiful and striking animal.

To my knowledge, anacondas have not been morphed or corrupted much. I plead with morphers to leave them alone. Let the rest of us enjoy anacondas the way they are supposed to be. By morphing and introducing those animals to the general public, you are LITERALLY hurting THE REST OF US. Think about it. The LAST thing I want to see in the world is a striped anaconda. God help us.

I dont like morphs at all (exept albinos). I have to laugh when I see grown men spending large amounts of time and money for a snake that is pink or trying to breed the heck out of it to get them even pinker. i bet you in five years or so you will be unable to find a normal ball python and if you do your going to pay dearly. I went to NERD the other day and saw a ball python for $45,000. Come on thats just nuts. A example of over morphing, go to the boa classifieds and try to find a PURE salmon island boa, good luck. But i am guilty of morphing I am now working on a super high pink anaconda X ball python X water monitor X goat and Im going to sell them for $1,000,000,000.99 and am now taking reserves for them, So...how many can i put you down for??? Kidding about the morph so dont send me any money for it unless you realy want to, LMAO

I'm glad you agree, but you know I'm expecting some
disagreement on the topic. Yes, I forgot about Ball pythons,
you make a good point there, they are getting morphed as bad as any other species.

I suspect disagreers have their own mindset, and are not too concerned about what they are doing to the future lineage of the snakes. They are just out for the money right now.

Another thought or two...

Morphers aren't doing a very good job. I'd bet my house that
if you show 100 people a normal burmese and a patternless burmese, 95 of the people would say the normal is much prettier. The other 5 are probably color blind. Same holds true for just about every morph produced. As I've said, I have to admit albino retics and burms are splendid looking, but at least nature does that somewhat frequently. This is just an observation that the morphers are doing a poor job. Even if they did produce decent, good looking, striking morphs, I don't think it should be done.

If you want something to tinker with, go buy a boat and
mess with it. It doesn't reproduce the tinkering that
you do to it. Animals are different. When you tinker with
animal genetics, you are hurting us all. I want my kids, their kids, and their descendents to enjoy the real anaconda, not some
morph. I think it is morally wrong and irresponsible to do
wholesale morphing. Sometimes I wonder how the morphers sleep
at night (I guess OK on expensive beds they bought with morph
money). In my opinion, people who buy those poor looking morphs are getting swindled. I guess they don't realize that they just paid 10 times the price of a beautiful burmese for an ugly morph! What in the world are they thinking?

Morphing could conceivably be acceptable if it were done
in a professional, controlled way. But how many pedigrees come
with your newly purchased morph? And what is the value of these
morphs? At least with dogs, the morphs had particular "useful?"
traits, like going down a rabbit hole, running fast, biting the hell out of people, olfactory sensitivity, etc. But what good is the patternless burmese (example) to the world?

An old girlfriend of mine had a cute saying that rhymed, I can't exactly remember, but to the affect "strange is good" -
referring to people's propensity to have sexual encounters
that are not exactly morally appropriate. I think the same
concept applies with morphing - if something is different it must be good. I guess it's the same principle as not wanting the same car as the Jones' next door. Too bad "professional" herpers aren't above that.

Interestingly, I hold in my hand right now a baby Indian python (yes, typing can be a challenge). I have to wonder whether it is 100% Indian or perhaps 90% Indian (and 10% Burmese). All because a few people have crossed them for supposedly legal/commercial reasons. Damn those people. Please don't cross Indians and Burmeses. If you need a mate for an Indian, I'm sure everyone on Kingsnake.com would try to help you find one, rather than cross breed them. [OK, perhaps this isn't exactly morphing, but similar concepts and concerns].

i have a green anaconda who is 66% possible het. for macklots python.

all morphs are natural. And i agree with you about the BC thing about how it is nearly impossible to know which locality you got any more. But burm and retics bloodline diversity is good, seeing as how there is no subspecies of them. And yes people who work with morphs for solely profit are bad, but the people who work with morphs because they love the animal and want to make money working with it aren't.
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0.1 "Tremper" looking Albino Leopard gecko (Lex)
0.0.1 normal ball python (felix)
1.1 Feral cats that we adopted (Fuzzy, and Bear)

I think we need to seperate, in our minds, color morphs from hybrids. Color morphs don't change the snakes in any fundamental way (only a single color gene is affected), and you can get a normal from breeding two morphs together which is indistinguishable from any other CB normal. Morphing will never wipe out normal phase animals, it would be nearly impossible. Hybridization does change the animal in a fundamental way and with hybridization it could become possible that the CB andaconda gene pool could become very different from any exsisting wild andaconda. So that would suck a lot more.
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Eryx - All the fun of a boa in a convenient pocket size!