I think you guys somehow got this all wrong. A hypo is not a lite colored individual calking.

The above explination is great, and explains a lot. But its a bit out of context.

Calkings come naturally and normally is many colors, or shades of color. Coastals come from very lite brown on a yellowish snake, to dark brown on a yellowish snake(you could reverse that if you want) The yellow also verys in color and shade.

Desert calkings, are normally whitish or lite yellowish, with much darker brown to black markings. Again this is normal.

A hypo is not the shade of black or brown. Its the density of the melanocytes. Hypos have few melanocytes and appear translucent to some degree. With fewer melanocytes the darker markings appear less dark, liter brown or black,if you will and less dense. The liter colors are also less dense, and appear liter. So you cannot have a true hypo with normal lite colors.

Somehow this has been lost in the confusion of folks wanting to name something. Just something to consider. As you can and do call them any old thing you want(and rightfully so) But that does not make that lite brown coastal a hypo, or any lite brown snake a hypo(there are hundreds of lite brown species and they are not hypos) The reason is, the terms hypo and hyper, are applied to what is considered normal for a species. Calkings average a set amount of melanocytes. The very extremes from that normal are then coined hypo and hyper. Hypos and hypers are not part of normal variation.

Lite brown coastal kings are normal and part of the normal variation. Now if you caught that lite brown cal king in the high desert, it would be odd, a hypo maybe? Cheers

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