I've recently come to the idea that kobolds have a limited racial memory. Every kobold, even one hatched alone and raised by badgers, knows it is a kobold and knows what that means relative to the rest of the world. They also all have a singular inborn fear of something. Usually, this is identical within a tribe: the Wristbite tribe all fears water too deep to stand in, for instance. Some scholars theorize this is tied to their racial memory: one of their ancestors died so horrifically to whatever they fear that it's stained into the tribes memory until something equally terrible happens in to another kobold and changes its descendants' fear.