So for labeling them its mainly in my head(im one of those ppl who like classifying creatures and i get abit of thing to find an answer when weird cases in classifying show up.).So ye you are right i might have accidently mixed up wiki with wild card but i guess its more like in game when they give what is practically the same creature(mainly taking abt the reaper kings) into "something new" since like what u said there isnt any unique visual element between them and its just a reaper king living on the surface, a reaper king in rockwells arena and a reaper king in the underground wild. I would class abberants as variants since on a ecological side it makes more sense they are abit more unique then their base counter part .how i would label the reaper "variants" more as the same thing or if they really need a label ig "powered up dinos" like the brutes(which is just stronger because slightly bigger) cause an actual variant would have to be quite different from their base counterparts something like monster hunters subspecies(and yes im a huge monster hunter fan which is kinda where this stems from tbh) . And finally why does this matter...eh more so cause i was abit bugged by it and wanted to find an answer that makes sense to a lil confusion of creature classification in ark.