If there’s a way to do it, I haven’t been able to find it. Can we get a filter option that will not show imported animals? Maybe the option to choose if we want Captive Bred or not?
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AMEN! That would be very cool!
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Ya I agree. I don’t mind when I get my first herp if its Imported (I’m in Canada and considering the species I’ve chosen to have the honor of 1st herp its almost certainly gonna have to be imported for me.) But it would be nice if I could find captive bred…I don’t see any CB on morphmarket for my 1st herp chosen species.
I’m tracking a lead off morphmarket for a CB of my chosen species and will suggest to them to become a merchant on morphmarket in the future if it turns out their actaully good. I hope to maybe be in a position to buy it as a birthday present to myself come autumn.
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That would be a good filter, to be able to search for wild caught or captive born/bred.
The only problem I see is having to describe exactly what each category is. For example I think of captive born as being a snake that is born and bred in captivity. Some importers will get gravid wild collected snake, hatch out the eggs and advertise captive born.
I have contacted a seller on morph market about a “captive bred” monitor advertised as domestically produced. Turned out it was “Farm raised” I would consider that to be wild collected with all of the parasites and problems any other wild collected lizard would have. (seller was honest about it not being CBB when I asked about the breeder. )
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CB, aka captive born, is an animal that is born of a wild collected animal in captivity. CBB is captive born and bred, meaning the animals that produced them bred in captivity and are therefore well established. There are a lot of people out there that put “domestically produced” on farmed imported animals. I am not sure if we can report sellers for that, but I hope we can as it is a good way to scam people if not. We need a farmed option for sellers to choose from just so they stop trying to cheat the system.
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Very good point. I have seen farmed animals listed as C.B. I think most or all of them are wild caught off of someone’s land in their native habitat.
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I would certainly appreciate this feature.
I know choice of phrasing and their definitions may differ but I imagine something like this would be useful:
CBB - Captive born & bred (Parents kept in captivity / Offspring born in captivity)
CH - Captive hatched or born (Parents not kept in captivity (outdoors in a largely free range area that may be sectioned from wilderness) / Offspring are collected and hatched in captivity)
FB - Farm bred (These animals are usually bred outdoors in their native region outdoors/in wilderness in sectioned areas, offspring may or may not be collected before hatching and therefore may be exposed to the outdoors)
WC - Wild-caught (Specimens collected from their native region, completely wild)
It would be nice to use these descriptors in addition to the origin descriptors already present and being able to filter as such.
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I feel that @fatalis has come up with categories that are better than the categories we currently have. I would change it slightly, like this:
Captive Bred/Self-Produced - Captive born and bred by the seller.
Captive Bred/Other - Captive born and bred by someone other than the seller.
CH - Hatched in captivity from WC gravid female
FB - Farm Bred in country of origin, then imported.
WC - Wild Caught
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Thank you Travis, I missed this thread somehow 
This is actually on our spreadsheet for future features 
I will add everyone votes and also link this discussion to the spreadsheet so we can add future ones.
The more votes a feature gets the higher priority we treat it!
I will add this to our notes 
We need suggestions so that we can constantly improve, no matter how big or small!
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Perhaps LTC needs to be included as well? And, if so, a definition of what the seller means by LTC (Long Term Captive) . In my early keeping , I was surprised that sometimes LTC was only a couple months. That’s far different than a LTC of a year or more.
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I see that a lot too. Make the LTC option specify that it has to be in captivity at least a year. I see people saying LTC on ads and they then say they have only had em a month. That is nowhere near being long term.
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I personally don’t think we should differentiate between WC and LTC because there will be rampant misuse of the the term LTC, even if guidelines are made available. If anything, the category should be “WC X Months” with the X being replaced by the number of months in captivity. If we do end up going with “LTC” as a category, I agree with @ashleyraeanne that the guideline should stipulate that an animal is not LTC unless it is captive for 12 months at the minimum. I have WC animals that have been in my collection for ~7 months and someone else’s for a few before that, and they are nowhere near out of the woods.
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I agree that we may need a farmed option as well as maybe a Country of Origin label for those critters. Not all sellers who are doing this are doing it are running a scam or trying to do anything shady. Many of them are trying to do business in good faith within the platform MM provides. I have purchased some captive bred European imports listed as “Domestically Produced” and I am extremely happy with them, I want those sellers to continue. Others with darker methods and motives I want to see banhammered…so it is a nuanced game on all sides.
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I tend to agree with this, also, LTC is a squishy concept. When we have some species that gestate for almost a year, does a year count as LTC? For species that live longer than many humans what counts as LTC? It is too easy to stretch that term into abuse territory.
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I think that it’s important to note that not every import animal listed on Morphmarket is WC. I see a lot of European breeders when they are cycling out old breeding animals to make room for younger animals they’ve raised to adulthood, if they bought any of that stock from US breeders, they will have it listed as an import. I’m not sure if that same behavior is repeated on the North American site with cb animals originally imported from Europe or from US to Canada or vice versa being listed as imported, but it’s something buyers may want to consider before automatically dismissing imports. Also maybe Morphmarket could make a way to differentiate between animals that are wc imports, farmed imports and cb imports, but I understand if that would cause too much clutter on the filter options
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I think we should, for the reasons above, just completely drop the “import” category. It’s too vague. We should have categories that clearly indicate whether and animal is WC, Farmed, CH or CBB.
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I would disagree with you here. I have an import kukri that has been in my collection for going on four years. She is, most certainly, a LTC. I have two others that I have had for around for six months, I do not consider them LTC. If I were to sell any of them, I would have no qualms about using the LTC label for the prior.
I do agree that the term can be abused, but I think if there is an absolute definition to it - maybe something like “fully established in terms of feeding and husbandry for a period of no less than one year” - then I feel it could be safely used
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I think the idea’s great but I think there will always be someone who says something like “my wc retic ate live rabbits every week for 2 months and never refused”. I think that you would need to put specific numbers on it like:
- Kept in captivity for a year.
- Have a negative fecal sample for parasites.
- Eats well for the species.
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(Although add a few other things under the “husbandry” umbrella like ecoparasites and sheds and possibly viral/bacterial cultures and a few others)
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So… Basically what I said… But with more words?
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