I wish more people would have more of a desire to actually read more books about snakes and LEARN as much as possible about their natural history and the fine details of the countless different types of snakes there are out there in the world. It seems it is mainly only about colors and patterns to many folks with very little interest on what they actually ARE or what key meristic features are actually used to distinguish them from each other.

I think in more recent years, these have basically become times of "instant gratification" helped along with the internet age where people simply click on the never ending eye-pleasing colors/patterns of snakes on a whim without much concern at all as to knowing (or caring) what kind of snakes they actually are. They just want to "make stuff" because they see that many others are doing it.

All of the people that just know enough to toss a couple snakes together "willy-nilly" without really caring about them even being the same kind are the main source of all the questionable snakes and negativity in the colubrid market. If so many folks didn't continuously do this, it would never be an issue of negativity in the first place.

Taking the time to know how to identify snakes for yourself takes far too long for most people, so they just go by what something was sold to them as by someone else, sort of like "the blind leading the blind" that only perpetuates more questionable stuff and negativity down the road in the colubrid hobby. For the most part, a Ball python is......well, a Ball python, but knowing what you are looking at in the colubrid market can be quite an undertaking, even for very experienced people. If you can't tell the difference between a Black ratsnake and an anerythristic cornsnake, you don't really have much business breeding them in my opinion, but that certainly won't stop it from happening every single breeding year.......


~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"


serpentinespecialties.webs.com

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