I’m wondering why people new to this industry are either so defensive, or simply refuse to listen to those who have been doing it longer and/or have good info for them. I came across an add where the snake was very clearly mislabeled. Honestly severely so. So I hit the inquiry button and advised the seller that this snake did not have 2 of the 5 genes he listed. He proceeded to say that I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me in a way to invalidate what I was telling him (or her not sure didn’t look at the name of the person just the business) he then tells me the pairing of the animal in question and one of the 5 genes he listed on the animal wasn’t even in the pairing. Then he defends his posting by showing a pic of another snake labeled the exact same way that looked similar to his. Now it was clear to me that snake was also mislabeled so I emailed that business also. A business that produces hundreds if not thousands of snakes. My guess was with how many they post they just attached the wrong image to that posting. Now when this business replied guess what, acknowledged the mistake and thanked me for bringing it to their attention. A business that’s been around for a while and is a known name with more cause to defend their practices than a newbie to the game. It just boggled my mind that this guy just dismissed my info immediately, defended his posting all while acknowledging he is new to the industry and that one of his listed genes wasn’t even in the pairing. My guess is he won’t last long. Making guesses on pairings, adding genes not present in the parents just cause he sees something in another add, too boot on an add that was also misidentified and then attacking someone who offered knowledge and a correction. Crazy. OK I’ll get off my soapbox now. 
If I’ve learned anything in the last few years it’s that combo identification is part science and part art. You can’t have genes in a hatchling that aren’t in the parents, obviously. But there is a lot of variation even within different examples of the same morph. IDing combos can be complicated. I have trouble IDing some two gene combos, so I can’t even imaging trying to ID a five gene combo.
It helps to start out with less genes and be open to feedback.
Agreed but with this particular snake they are all pretty easily identifiable. Two in particular are readily apparent. They have since adjusted the identification however they left one gene that I’m fairly certain is not present. I suppose I could be wrong. I’m by no means an expert nor infallible
Yeesh. There was one time I found a mislabeled snake (it was a butter pinstripe labeled as a butter spider) and I kindly let the breeder know and they thanked me and fixed it. They did ended up selling that snake since I noticed it was marked as sold not too long after.
The fact that anyone would just throw genes in at random even though the parents don’t have them tells me either of two things:
- This person does not understand ball python morphs and did not bother to research these things at all, and therefore is very careless
OR - If the ad they referenced was priced higher than their snake they are trying to sell, they might know better but be hoping that some other newbie falls for the misleading ad
Based on the replies I think its more the former. I think they are new to this whole thing and really have not bothered to research and learn about the genetics. Just wanted to produce and sell snakes. Like I said the only reason they put the identification they did is because they saw a similar snake that had that identification. Low and behold that snake was also mislabeled tho simply as an oversight by that particular breeder. He also acknowledged he didn’t even breed the parents so not sure why he is the one selling the snake.
I would post a pic of the snake to see what others think but really have no desire to put the guy on blast and out him like that. I did recommend to him that he post a pic of the snake himself on this forum to get the opinion of others on here but apparently he has no interest in that either. Can’t help people if they refuse to be helped.
Yeah, that could very well be the case. He’ll either figure it out or he’ll be out of the hobby pretty quickly. Nobody is gonna buy a clearly mislabeled snake unless they are also new to the hobby and unaware of the issue 
It does still give a bad taste in my mouth with the idea of someone getting defensive over a rather important thing like accurate identification of an animals’ morphs… like come on.
Even I still needed opinions on my banana yellowbelly x spider clutch… because YB isn’t something I can reliably ID on my own… I haven’t had anyone else confirm or object the one opinion on the IDs I was given so I might have to bump the thread again or try posting on the other forum I kind of use
There’s a new phenomenon that people are allowed to have their own opinion, AND that it cannot be questioned. On subjective topics, this has always been an appropriate viewpoint. The problem now is that people apply this to everything.
The market will catch up to him. He won’t make it for long. Either his lack of knowledge will get him. Or his unwillingness to learn and grow. Likely both at once…
I’ve come across a person like that, though I didn’t notify them of the mislabeled genes because I noticed that another snake that they were trying to sell was actually not even their snake, they stole someone else’s photo so I just reported them lol. The person you talked to could possibly a scammer and thought that they might get figured out when you tried to help them. Not saying that they are btw, it’s just a possibility.
Edit: I feel like I should add that there was more wrong with the listings besides the genes and the stolen photo that made me report them, the listings were a mess with contradictions or things that didn’t add up so it was pretty obvious that the person was a scammer.
I’ve often wondered if it is appropriate to report listings that are unquestionably wrongly labeled. For example, (I know most about leopard geckos), an animal labeled as ‘stripe’ (selectively bred in leos, so there’s no ‘het. stripe’… yet) that has no striping. I worry that newbies will fall for something like that, but I’m not comfortable contacting the people who has mislabeled their listing(s).
Contacting the person is actually the only recourse. Its listed under the terms on MM. You can only report people for cases of fraud or actual posting violations. For animals believed to be mislabeled they say to email the seller.
Slight correction. This is the first form of action that should be taken. If is doesn’t work, contact the support team using This link and selecting “My question is not listed”. Include a link to the ad and explain the issue and it will be looked into.
Yes please do not report someone just because they have mislabeled genes, I only did what I did because, like I said, it was pretty obvious that they were trying to scam others. @leatherneck_pythons if you want to, could you go look at the snake again and see if you find any inconsistencies in the listing such as birth year, weight, and what the snake eats because that was what helped clue me in on the other scammer, like if it’s a 2016 female ball python that weighs 200 grams and eats small rats for example. If everything else checks out then they might just be really rude like you said, but it seems to me like scammers usually become extremely defensive like that for such simple things. I know that it might be a hassle, but if it is a scammer then we need to take care of them before they, well, scam someone.
I just report them to MM if its obvious. I am still considered new to the hobby, and i am not perfect, but I do try.
In thisncase, he has been told and was caught adding random genes, he intends to be dishonest and he wont last long
Since this thread is a bit old, I wanted to update now that we are meant to report ads for being mis-IDed. I pride myself on knowing pretty darn well how to ID and I very, very often (I mean, at least a few times every single day) see very obviously mis-IDed animals on MorphMarket. I used to reach out to the breeders myself very kindly, just saying “Hey, I see you’ve got this animal IDed as X, I am not seeing this gene(s) present and here’s why” and unfortunately I am not exaggerating when I say that 9/10 responses are some variant of “lol, f off.”
So with that said - I don’t have the mental bandwidth for that. I already have depression and anxiety, I don’t need to deal with people being nasty when I’m just kindly trying to help them. So now, the moment I see a mis-IDed animal, I report it to MM, even if I think it may be unintentional. Now, if MM wanted to pay me to correct IDs I’d be down, but while I don’t work for MM someone who gets paid to deal with that kind of thing can handle it.
Unfortunately, ego seems to play into a lot of it. I have seen multiple popular, well-known breeders get super pissy when a mis-ID is pointed out to them. One in particular where I pointed out an animal that 1,000% has enchi and kindly suggested the breeder consider a genetic test to confirm, the breeder very harshly told me not to post on their page anymore. You’d think the breeder would be happy I pointed out an extra gene in the animal, but that was not the case. I can and absolutely do admit when I’m wrong about IDs (which admittedly doesn’t happen very often) and I wish that other breeders were able to react with the same grace and learn rather than stand their ground for ego’s sake.