Generally speaking, just carrying the gene for a recessive trait will not affect the phenotype (outward appearance) of the animal. Sometimes it does though. Mitch at Diamond Reptiles, who produces the hets for leucistic, hets for sunset, and double hets for both, does have snakes that appear slightly odd. They have the 'formosa' appearance, so it's very likely that the original gene carriers were the formosa color/pattern varient or something along those lines. Your animal doesn't just have a lighter color, but a sort of merged hood marking that seems to be an intermediate between the monocle on kaouthia and the spectacle on naja. It's head morphology suggests kaouthia though to me, more than anything, so I'm still thinking it's either a hybrid or just some odd color varient of kaouthia. And again, it's a very nice looking snake, one you should be proud to have in your collection. I would most certainly breed it with another kaouthia asap and see how the babies turn out. You could keep back a few of the babies and see if something strange, like a leucy, pops out. You'll never know until you try. Keep us updated on how things go.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

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