Yes, spiders really are hets!

Another thing that heterozygous doesn't mean (in addition to not meaning necessarily normal looking) is half way to something different looking.

As soon as some ball python people get past the idea that hets must always look normal because that's the way it worked out with recessive mutations they latch on to the idea of a pastel as a het for super pastel. If pinstripe turns out to be dominant and the homozygous pinstripe looks just like the pinstripes we see today there will still be heterozygous for pinstripe animals. The pastels are heterozygous for the pastel mutation, not heterozygous for the super pastel phenotype. It’s a subtle distinction and not terribly important. But I'm happy just to see people understanding that they are any sort of het because understanding genotypes will help in predicting the outcome of the complicated combinations that are starting to be possible for the masses.

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