I am proposing an idea as for an alternative search filter to search for a certain repelled by color scheme to save time and for people who don’t know much about genetics .
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As in just listing by overall color?
You unfortunately may need to be versed in genetics as many animals will change color over time. Some dramatically so.
For example, green tree pythons start out as a bright yellow or red hatchling…and turn bright green as adults.
My very white and silver ball python turned a very pale yellow and tan over time.
Listing by color may set up a newer hobbyist for disappointment if they don’t look into the genetics. Which is something every owner should be aware of honestly. For things like wobble in snakes or enigma syndrome in leopard geckos.
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It would be filled in under a different color if it changes as a sub adult/adult. It would probably cause a huge spike in sales.
One big problem with this is that color is hard to gauge. Ivory, banana, and pastel ball pythons could all be considered yellow, but they are super different and their patterns/color scheme aren’t comparable. Also, some snakes are multiple colors, would a pied ball python be brown or white? I think this is something that falls on the buyer. They should look around at morphs, and at least see what morphs they want, even if they don’t want to understand how the genetics work.
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I’ll refer back to what @armiyana mentioned. The buyer should be doing enough research to know what they’re buying, and not just shopping for a snake based on color.
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Half the reason people by a certain animal is due to its appearance. There’s still plenty snakes that look cool as hell I wouldn’t buy just because of the personality and complexity, the animal and obviously if it’s out of my price range.
While I see what you’re getting at @vinyl69, and while such a colour-based search feature may indeed increase sales…I’m not sure the buyers it would attract are necessarily the sorts of buyers most breeders would want to be selling their babies to.
This. It’s really not that hard to identify some more common morphs and pick your favourites, even if you have no understanding of genetics. If a buyer is unwilling to put the effort into doing that, it would make me question their ability to research the really important stuff, like husbandry. It’s true that many of us pick the animals we buy based on how they look, but that’s typically after we’ve done the necessary research on the species in question and determined that this is an animal we want and can realistically care for.
Though I suppose it might depend on what form this colour-based search feature would take. If it was just a question of being able to search “yellow snake” and the search would bring up all yellow morphs in all species, I see that as being potentially problematic for the reasons listed above by me and others. However, if each species maybe had morphs categorized by colour in some way, like having a “light morph” and “dark morph” heading for species that have a lot of morphs, that could be kinda nice.
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Still wouldn’t hurt for people who just wanna look for a specific color scheme.
So then you can look the animal up by the species or morphs. Like reds? Kingsnakes or corns have a lot of reds, ball pythons won’t.
It boils down to there only being so many factors you can search by. Breaking it down into something other than by the morph means then you would need possible searches for pattern as well as color because that can drastically change an animal’s look as well.
That also brings the issue of subjectivity mentioned above. What we call ‘blue’ in some animals is just a slate grey color. If someone is somewhat colorblind they may have a wildly different expectation of what colors may be as well.
Some animals drastically change color as well. Look at the pattern changes on a leopard gecko. Or the change from baby to adult in gree tree pythons.
Listing them by morph is a much easier option.
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