I also don't think that most breeders are intentionally trying to give anyone a poor quality product. They are just trying to describe the animals they have. Everyone has a different way of looking at something. I might like a leopard gecko that is more of an orange yellow and you might like a lemon yellow animal. Then if you throw in wild type animals from different locals or different subspecies, you get some different physical looks and some blending or combination of traits.
I know what you mean about diamonds not making the grade, but not dogs. A pure bred dog is never a mutt! A mutt is a cross breeding between two different breeds. A pure bred dog is always a pure bred dog! Some conform to the breed standard better than others. We have not even come close to creating a standard for the leopard gecko, so I think asking the GGA to take on a task like this is very premature.
I also am not sure that the GGA wants that as a goal. It is a huge task to take on with just the leopard gecko. The GGA is made up of people that love geckos. Not everyone in the GGA keeps leopard geckos and some could care less about selective breeding of color or pattern. If you wanted to take on the task of standardizing the look of the leopard gecko, you would most likely have to form a new group composed of people interested in that goal. Then all the members would have to all agree to breed for certain qualities the group agrees upon.
I guess my advise to you is: if you want an animal that looks a certain way don't buy an animal that you have not seen. Go see it in person. If you can't see the animal, ask the breeder to give you a picture. More and more breeders are doing things this way. When I bought my dog, the breeder had all her info on her web site. She had health certifications, pedigrees, and pictures of the sire, dam, and pups on her web site. I have noticed more and more breeders are doing business this way. It is convenient if you want a certain look, but you still need to see the animal if you are looking for temperament or drive.
Catriona
At 10:23 AM 1/1/2004 -0600, you wrote:
It would be nice to define what exactly is a jungle morph leopard gecko. There are some other things I would like to see defined too. Red tailed Phelsuma cepediana needs defined too as some people try to pass the maroon tailed ones off as red tails. Also with the frogs, there are currently about 33 morphs of Dendrobates tinctores and different people are calling them all different things and confusing most of the customers out there. Some of the morphs have differences too. Consistently different amounts or sizes of spots, etc. Same with geckos.
Shouldn't there be a grading scale (pun intended) to determine the amount of yellow in a high yellow leopard gecko? Have you ever ordered a "high yellow" from a supplier and it looks like something yellow from your newborn's diaper? I'm trying to be polite as I know there are all ages reading this. Perhaps there could be a color card published to rate the yellow?
Just like diamonds and dogs there are those that aren't going to make the best grade and those that are just plain mutts. Are they Phelsuma mad. mad.s or as Tytle calls his, mutt mutts? I certainly wouldn't want to order thinking I was getting diamonds when all I got was dogs. What do you do with diamond dogs? Can't resale them for a profit because they weren't worth it to begin with. Lie to the next purchaser about how great they are? I certainly wouldn't buy from that supplier again. Fortunately now days there is the internet and digital cameras to speed things up and manipulate the colors so they look better.
Perhaps this group or society should come up with grading like AKC dog breeds. Rate the wideness of the leopard gecko's head, the pattern, the color, the symmetry of the tail, overall length, etc. Whether or not the individual belongs to the short snouted Stenodactylus or the long snouted ones. Does it fall in-between? Let's have standardized measurements to determine the short and long of it all.
Keep track of where the source of the herps came from. Were they imported? Smuggled? If you really knew... From a particular breeder? Would he tell you where his came from? I used to import from Pakistan. How I regret selling that adult female albino to Rainwater, but I needed to pay the bills.
When we sell the herps, we should be able to email the pedigree to purchasing parties. However, with large scale breeders, this means even more paperwork, but well worth it. When I imported, those herps that were imported had copies of the paperwork sent along with them to the customer for their records. If CB herps, then they would have records listing the parentage. i.e. WC1 & WC2 or if from one breeder or more, A2Z1 & RT1. RT would be my initials if I caught the herps and A2Z would be for the other breeder or person that caught some. If someone has a better method of keeping track of the animals, that would be good for us to adopt it so we would have compatible methods of keeping track. It would be good if we pit tagged them too.
I didn't bother to ID every herp that came in. That would be impossible with the thousands that come in with every shipment. The people buying them could give them their own ID. We would always pick out the best looking for the breeding projects, ID them and they would start their quarantine probationary period. I have had to satisfy the US government's misnomered Department of Intelligence and prove lineage of some Australian skinks. It took a year to track it all down through the different dealers, but eventually I got it traced back to the Rotterdam Zoo that bred some offspring in 1954. I got my babies back as adults. The wildlife officer said that his son was going to miss keeping those skinks!
But with all of the legislation going on it might not be possible to keep many of our beloved herps in the near future. Perhaps THIS year, ALL of the herp societies and shows, expos, etc. should concentrate their efforts to legislation and show them just how big this cryptic group is. Maybe we can prove just how organized we are and that we should be treated with the same respect as the other pet societies and groups.
Sorry for the tirade and lengthy posting.
Ray Tripp BugEaters [EMAIL PROTECTED] for my newsletter.
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