What's your favorite species of snake? And do you have a favorite morph?
Although I named myself after the Aspidities genus because they’re funny little weirdos, I have been in love with Morelia viridis, the Green Tree Python, since I was probably seven or eight years old. They’re a ‘lifetime’ species for me. And it’s pure aesthetics—they’re just incredibly gorgeous. Even when they’re simply pure green, or lack the blue/yellow/white pigmentation, GTPs always look good. They’re a diurnal basking species, too, so they’ll sit right out in the open in the cage on a perch, looking all fabulous and green and mysterious, whereas most of my snakes spend most of their days curled up sleeping in a hiding spot, so when people come to look at the snakes, the GTPs are always the thing to see. I think they’re so pretty.
They’re also one of those ‘advanced’ species that’s a bit harder to care for and can be tricky to raise and breed, so there’s that nice feather in my cap for having not one but two of them thriving at the rates that they are. And mine are absurdly tame and handleable, despite the species having a well-deserved reputation for defensive behavior—but that could honestly come down to my own experience, as I’d say they still require more ‘reading’ and watching for strike behavior than other snakes. They strike fast so you need to learn them quick or you’ll take a few bites. But my two are absolute babies, which means I have these very sweet, very calm, very gorgeous medium-sized bright green snakes to show off and stare at, and I honestly just love them for it.
As for the second q, I’m not really a huge ‘morph’ person, tbh, because I’m one of those ‘reptile snobs’ who just likes animals the way they look in the wild. The ‘wild type’ is usually my favorite, because I’m a total snake nerd and if it looks like it did in the book I owed as a kid, I’m hooked. There’s so many different colors and varieties in the natural snake world too, so I don’t really see a point in a lot of morphs, and there is a significant controversy over breeding for certain colors or patterns in the reptile community, and it’s growing in concern. There are common ‘beginner’ species that are easy for novices and general businesspeople to breed with little to no training—animals like corn snakes, ball pythons, boas, etc—and they can easily be churned out in massive numbers, which they sadly are. The ‘morphs’ are just a new way to put a higher price tag on the same snake, and sometimes it results in truly harmful long term effects like neurological issues (‘stargazing’ and ‘wobbling’ found in both boas and ball pythons of certain morphs) and heart/liver/general organ health issues. Some lines have fatal rectal prolapse disorders. Some lines are prone to blindness and poor vitamin A retention. I have a ‘sunglow’ boa, which is a mix of a hypomelanistic trait and an albinistic trait, and is an animal worth easily $200-300 on the regular market as a cute baby, but she was given to me for free because she had a massive respiratory infection due to poor handling and husbandry, so just because it has a nice price tag when you buy it or the breeder sells it, doesn’t mean it always ends up in good hands, either. My boa is fine now, but she’ll always be slightly smaller and stunted, too, as a result of this morph, and some find that attractive and desirable. Not me, man, I want a big wild Brazilian boa, around 9’ and thick as a golf cart tire! But that’s overbreeding for you.
It’s just as complicated and nuanced an issue as dog breeding, honestly, and just because snakes aren’t cuddly like dogs doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be something folks are aware of when they look at a cool snake. Sometimes that pretty color can have a much higher cost than just the seller’s cash, and you’d never know, as a novice hobbyist. Now, all that preaching being said, do I understand the curb appeal of a morph? Absolutely! They’re cute! And some of them, like albinos and hypos and general single gene morphs, aren’t really all that harmful. It’s just a choice of how much research you want to do before you buy, for one, and, more importantly, if that research is even available when you purchase the animal. Reptile hobby breeding only really exploded in the last 40yrs of keeping, and it’s a new ‘science’. We still don’t know yet what the effects of breeding for color or pattern will be, but I can guess—lots of other animals paved the way for that. If reptiles go the way of purebred dogs, we may be seeing some really severe and common ailments start cropping up and it would be too late to fix it.
So yeah, all of that soapbox to say I just like the snakes to look like the type of snake they is!
