Leucistic Hognoses
Leucistic western hognoses hatch out with a faint pink cast that fades into a completely blank white coat as they mature, unmatched by any other western hognose morph. Dark eyes are the only colour the gene leaves alone, which is what tells one apart from an albino at a glance.
About the Leucistic gene
Leucistic strips a western hognose (Heterodon nasicus) of every trace of dorsal pattern, producing a solid white animal with no blotching, no tail bands and no headstamp, while leaving the eyes their own colour because pigment there develops on a separate path from the rest of the skin. It is the most complete de-patterning gene in the catalogue, more thorough than albino or arctic, and that is exactly its appeal: a keeper buying leucistic wants the blank white canvas rather than a lightened wild-type pattern, and breeders reach for it in combinations precisely because it erases whatever pattern the paired gene would otherwise leave behind.
Appearance
A leucistic hatchling is usually white with a faint pink cast across the belly and lower sides, a flush that fades over its first months as the animal settles into the flat, chalky white of an adult. The surest way to call one on sight is the complete absence of pattern: no other western hognose morph drops every marking, including the headstamp that wild-type and most other morphs keep, so a truly blank white body is diagnostic on its own. Eye colour is the one thing the gene does not touch, and it varies animal to animal from near-black through slate to pale blue-grey; paired with the white body, dark eyes are also what separate a leucistic from an albino, whose eyes run red rather than dark.
Genetics
Leucistic is a simple recessive: two copies of the gene are needed for the white, patternless phenotype, and a single copy produces a het that is visually identical to a normal western hognose. The family carries the full set of recessive labels: Het Leucistic, 50% Het Leucistic, 66% Het Leucistic and Pos Het Leucistic, and none of them can be picked out by eye, only by parentage or a proven test breeding. The mutation's discovery is undocumented beyond a single, decades-old hobby forum account that has never been independently confirmed.