.
Another thing that US breeders rarely will talk about is that the vast majority of "designer" GTPs are predominantly green as adults.
Most of the pictures you see in magazines and ont he internet are taken when the animals are still changing color, the "calico" animals are a prefect example. Just ask someone to show you a picture of a 5-7 year old "calico" you wont find one.
The designer mutts have a prolonged and more complicated color change, thats all, and many breeders simply stop taking pics when the animals mature.
One dead giveaway is to look at the eye color. The vast majority of "extreme" mutt GTPs are red-neonates, and they have reddish eyes. the eye color remains untill they are sub-adults but changes to the normal color when they are mature. Occasionally some poeple will get young males to breed and you do see the occasional picture of an animal with juvenile eye color breeding.
Look closely at the eyes of all these "desinger" GTPs and you will see that most are still the juvenile color.
This is all a bit dis-ingenous. The GTPs community here is not particularily honest with regard to several issues.
They present these "desingers" as if they were predictably inheritable, and these appearances are not. Most of the people who spend a great deal of money on these animals as neonates end up with predominantly green snakes.
I posted a thread to the large GTP forum some time ago and simply asked for pics of "extreme" adults, at least 5 years old or older. Excluding WC animals the thread received virtually no responses.
Another thing to consider is that virtually every GTP you see prodcued here are hybrids and crosses. Its only a matter of time before Viridis is broken up into multiple forms at either the species or sub-species level,
There is a ton of propaganda surrounding this species. And its a chore to sort through it to find the truth.
Nick
that's a big call, Nick. if you're not right, you've just created another ton of propaganda. are your claims based on the fact that you received "virtually no responses" because that doesn't persuade me. you are also very loose with the term hybrid, intraspecific matings cannot be hybrids, and there aren't even any recorded subspecies with any taxonomic recognition (this is likely to happen eventually, as you say)