Poll: are you going to call "bloodred" anything else?

That was the first year I got AOL and launched my first (crappy) web site. Blood corns were on it. I was criticized for selling them for $75.00 when you could get them for $40.00 to $50.00 everywhere else. The site was changed in August of 1997 to basically what you see at SMR now and I still called them blood corns for several years. I had been breeding them since 1992 so if nobody answered your question on the other forum, it might be because I was busy at that time three years ago. I know Rich had them and dropped them for many years until recently. While I'm sure not everybody knows about them, many (especially in Florida) were breeding them throughout the nineties. Bought my first amel bloods and pewters in Orlando in 1995. Rosy bloods in 1997 and anery bloods in 1998. Not bragging. Just saying I've not only been breeding them since then, but marketing the babies since 1996. Granted, that very first male I got in 1990 was a dud. Took me three years to figure it out. DUH! Kept getting bad eggs. I have never had a sterile one since. Even though that was a bad start for me on this morph, I realized back then they were going to be valuable corns mixed with other colors and patterns for many years.

Not arguing. Just letting ya know that they've been around for a long time and I'll wager the Loves were breeding them before the nineties. In Kansas we didn't have access to alot of different corns back then.

I believe Rich calls them "grade B" Bloodreds and Don calls them "Bloodred outcrosses". Sure, calling a normal colored "epi" corn a blood would make sense if you think of terms of pattern and not color. The color bled together. I'd say your corns would be het for Blood.
As for as people who alreay use Blood/Bloodred interchangably, they most likely already have an understanding about the morph and probably are not the ones getting hung up on the "red" part of it. Also I am sure that getting them to change to calling only the red ones "bloodred" and the questionable one "bloods" would be more realistic than swapping them over to "diffuse".

It is too much trouble to go through with not enough advantages in return. A new name would create just as much confusion as keeping the old one.

I disagree.

A- it's not a lot of trouble nor will it cause mass confusion. There are several names for Anerythristics, Charcoals, Amels, and Hypos. In the other thread I posted specific quotes from the price lists of SerpenCo, CornUtopia, SMR, SWR, VMS showing that they all have listings with stuff like "Amelanistic (red albino)" on their price lists. IMO, putting "Episkiastic (Bloodred pattern)" or "Bloodred Pattern (Episkiastic)" on a price list is not "going through a lot of trouble." There's plenty of precedent to back me up.

B- I think there is a LOT to be gained, in many ways.

On the consumer side:
It is reasonable to expect that people can do a fair amount of research by reading the Corn Snake Manual, and half a dozen breeder's sites, and have a good handle on what the different morphs look like. Not everyone comes to forums to find information, especially if it can be found elsewhere.

Anyway, in the course of their reading/researching, they will notice that Okeetees vary quite a bit, Candycanes vary quite a bit, Miami Phase corns vary quite a bit, snows vary quite a bit, etc. They will expect some variation.

However, "bloodred" has probably THE most consistent description out there: "a patternless or nearly patternless, solid-red cornsnake." Read text descriptions and look at the pics. I think the only more consistently described variation in snakes is leucistic.

Based on that, it is reasonable to believe that people will not have any good reason to ask "how red are the bloodreds?" They've read it, they've seen it. They are solid red patternless cornsnakes. It's completely reasonable to expect exactly that from anything that is called a "bloodred," not only from the name, but from the way we as a hobby/industry consistently represent them.

My assertion is that one can do a good amount of research, enough to know what to expect with any other morph, but still not know what the deal is with "bloodreds," and still end up getting "ripped off" by someone who wasn't really being dishonest.

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On the seller's side:
There are orange and brown "bloodreds" that really are as different from the "patternless, solid red" cornsnakes as amels are from candycanes. The thing with amels is that if you have a candycane and breed it to a normal, you can honestly represent the babies as "het for amel." There is no such option right now with "bloodreds."

I know someone's going to want to say "you can call them outcrossed" but this isn't right either. A normal het amel is HET for amel, period. It is not "an outcrossed candycane." It's not right to expect people to sell their animals under some "substandard-sounding" name just because they aren't selectively-bred for ONE of the variations that can be produced.

Even for an honest seller, there is no good answer right now. You have two options:
1- sell them as bloodreds and if someone raises a cornsnake for three years and finds out it's not what they were "told" it was, too bad so sad, "that's the way it is."
2- sell them with some qualifier that makes them sound undesireable.

Advantages for teaching/learning/communicating:
When I was trying to figure out how to deal with the term "bloodred" for a book, I found it was a zillion times easier and made a lot more sense to treat them the same way amels/candycanes are treated. That is, one is a single-gene trait, the other is selective breeding built upon that single-gene trait. Instead of trying to cross-reference, it just makes more sense to clearly separate the two and identify them based on what they are.

From the perspective of someone who is already very familiar with the morph and the pattern, it may not seem confusing or difficult, but it's like trying to teach someone math when you're using the same symbol and name for both 3 and 7. It creates unnecessary confusion and keeps the focus away from the real issue. Describing the pattern as "having come from bloodreds" is like teaching kids how to count by explaining to them that 7 is a number that came from dividing 3 into 21.

And I think that the way it has been described, learned, and characterised as some "unique" morph or trait continues to foster confusion among people who have been familiar with the morph for much longer than I have. The only thing I've seen that's unique about it is the way it came to be discovered.

Rich asked what other corn starts with a pattern and loses it? Vanishing Stripes.

And there are stripes that don't lose their pattern. Same goes for corns expressing the Epi/Diffuse pattern.

The trait is not unique, IMO. It's just that we've been looking at it as "the cubed root of 81," instead of just calling it "3."

Those are nothing more than het. for bloodreds. At least, here when we breed a blood to a non blood, all the babies are considered het. (outcrossed bloodreds). BTW, that also is a name I used because no other corn shows signs of the trait in the F-1s. Didn't seem right to just call them het. for blood. AND it wasn't my name. Saw it all over the place before I started using them. Therefore, I don't think that's the way Rich is using "grade B". I only call them bloodreds if they come from two bloodred parents.

Originally posted by SODERBERGD
Not arguing. Just letting ya know that they've been around for a long time and I'll wager the Loves were breeding them before the nineties. In Kansas we didn't have access to alot of different corns back then.

Don, I'm not sure if you're addressing my "we haven't all known for years" comment, but I didn't mean people didn't know that bloodreds existed, I meant that nobody would ever talk about the related pattern as a simple genetic trait.

Back in Aug 2002 (only 18 months ago) in response to a post where I suggested that there is a genetic trait involved in "Bloodred," Clint Boyer said:

I believe the Bloodreds were originally developed from wild caught snakes that showed a more uni-color but were still considered normal. There was no original simple recessive gene to start the seletive breeding with. I would venture to guess that inbreeding the group produced the plain belly affect and that there may be no simple recessive gene in the Bloodred line.

And I believe he echoed the beliefs of a whole lot of people involved in cornsnakes. That was what we'd all been taught, and what we "all" knew at the time.

Maybe some people knew otherwise, but I never heard it openly discussed that way until I started posting threads about it within the last couple of years. For the longest time, "word on the street" was that it was some undecipherable mix of magical components.

So what part of my statement is inaccurate?

The part where you imply that there is no simple genetic trait involved in bloodreds.

Can you explain "simple RECESSIVE" to me and then explain which triat is simple recessive?

I'm not going to play semantics here. You argued that it came from line-breeding. That implies no simple genetic trait, recessive or otherwise. The meaning in that post was pretty clear.

Originally posted by Clint Boyer
Can you explain "simple RECESSIVE" to me and then explain which triat is simple recessive?

Oh, and if it was not initially visible and you had to line breed to bring out a single-gene trait, it would by definition have to be recessive.