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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.
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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."