Albino Corn Snake May Close Zoo in Philipines

Pasig City Mayor Robert Eusebio wants to close down the Arc Avilon Zoo in Ortigas Center if it is shown to have ignored guidelines to ensure the safety of visitors. He said he was taking action amid reports that a child was bitten by an Albino King Snake last Jan. 5. “If they fail to adopt safety measures for their patrons, we may have to have it closed,” he said. Eusebio wrote a letter to Avilon’s operator to explain how the facilities are secured to prevent a repeat of the incident. More…

Albino Deer Hit by Motorist In Arkansas

This poor guy was the victim of a automobile collision (though the car owner may feel a bit of a victim also) on highway 365 near Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Albino Peacock

It would be an interesting study to determine if there is an advantage (or disadvantage) to being albino in species such as peafowl and bettas that choose mates based on the impressiveness of a visual display.

Albino Snake Found in Trash

A 10 inch baby albino corn snake was found hiding in rubbish at Winn Gardens, Middlewood.

The creature, which is native to the warmer parts of North America, lives on a diet of live mice and rodents, and can grow to 6ft long.

It is harmless to humans and is believed to have been an unwanted Christmas present which could have been thrown away.

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Partially Albino Elephant

According to Dr Ian Whyte, elephant specialist at South Africa’s Kruger National Park, this young elephant is indeed partially albino, a condition that has been noted in a handful of young elephants in that park. “These have been young elephants (some very small babies) and it is not sure what becomes of them. It seems unlikely that they would grow darker with age as albinism is a permanent condition, but these young albino elephants seem to disappear. There have been at least two cases recently (of which I am aware) where such young albinos have been photographed. They have not been reported since. No one knows what becomes of them, though the mothers and families seem to treat them normally. Perhaps the albinistic condition does not protect them adequately from the sun which might result in some form of mortality related to over-exposure.”

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To Shoot or Not to Shoot Albino Deer – Minnesota vs. Wisconsin

From Whitetail 365: What is little known about Buffalo Co. Wis. is that albino deer are fairly common there. In fact it’s entirely possible—after talking to the right people—to drive around some summer evening and see a pretty good wad of white deer feeding in soybean and alfalfa fields. While there’s no such thing as an ugly deer, albinos are a pretty darn special sight. The people of Wisconsin think they’re so special that you can get into big trouble for shooting one.

Of course, right across the Mississippi River from there is my home state of Minnesota. Kill a white deer here and you’ll get your picture in the paper, and not in the “district court report” section.  Protecting albinos is an interesting thing. Most of us know by now that these are genetically inferior deer that in most cases are poorly equipped to survive in the wild. Indeed, some of my Wisconsin friends have found albino bucks dying in the middle of summer from any of a host of diseases they’re susceptible to. Naturally, there are exceptions. About five years ago, I was hunting Buffalo and rattled in a 3-1/2 year old albino buck with an 8-point rack. That deer is still alive. He is now a monstrous 10-point with candelabra antlers that appear anything but genetically inferior.  People drive for miles to check him out, lining up along his favorite fields with spotting scopes sprouting from their truck windows. 

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Not Albino, but…Lobster Found with Rare Pigmentation

A Nova Scotia fisherman made a rare catch this week when he hauled up a two-toned lobster in St. Mary’s Bay.

The lobster is divided into two colours straight down the middle of its back — dull green on one side and bright orange on the other.

The fisherman who owns the trap the female lobster was caught in has named it Jay after his son, who hauled it on board their boat on Jan. 8.

Jay the lobster has been donated to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, N.S., as an educational exhibit.

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Albino weka rare addition to dairy farm

The weka is extremely rare and only the second to ever be reported to the Department of Conservation (DOC).

Mr Berry noticed the white fluffy chick one morning before Christmas while he was out milking, and it is now a regular sighting on their Bulls Road farm.

DOC biodiversity ranger Julie Geritzlehner said it had been identified as a male and did not seem to have any problems with eyesight — a common problem with albinos.

However, the weka was not so keen to make friends.

“He was a bit shy, when I tried to get close enough to take a photo he darted away quite quickly which is a bit unusual,” Ms Geritzlehner said.

They decided it was best to leave the weka at the farm rather than attempting to place him in captivity. However, he may not live as long as other wekas.

“Because it’s so obvious in the landscape it means he may be more susceptible to things like harrier hawks,” Ms Geritzlehner said.

Another albino weka was spotted in Hector a few years ago but was never actually seen by a DOC ranger.  Source…

Albino Squirrel in Edinburgh, Scotland

The squirrel was photographed in the garden of Scott Neil, general manager of ice hockey team the Edinburgh Capitals, who lives in the Meadowspot estate.

Mr Neil said yesterday: “I saw it for the first time this morning and was quite surprised. I’ve never seen one before. My daughter put out nuts for the birds a few days ago and since then a few grey squirrels have been down.

“It stands out from the rest, but doesn’t seem to get treated any differently by other squirrels.”

It is likely the albino squirrel’s home is in the woods at Napier University’s Craighouse Campus or in the conservation area between the campus and Craiglockhart.  More…

White and Albino Buffalos in the News

One gets a name…(click on picture on the left for video report)…

                                                                                                                                               and … Cheyenne tribal member, Reverend Jay wallow’s, amazing surprise is the birth of a white buffalo calf.According to Swallow spiritual leaders from across the nation have advised him that the birth of his white buffalo calf is a sign of renewal, and where there is chaos, and disparity hope.

 SOURCE

Albino Dobermans

Purist Doberman breeders hate the fact that they exist and are actually bred for this condition, but albino Doberman dogs are available – and often for exorbitant prices. Featuring blue or occassionally yellow eyes, these dogs have a very light cream-colored coat. For a decent sized breed, their albinism can create ownership complications in that they must be strictly indoor dogs. Their eyes are extremily photosensitive, giving them poor vision in sunlight and their skin is susceptable to blistering and burning in excessive UV light. Many claim they are more anti-social than the pure breed.  

SOURCE

Life’s tough when you’re a beige penguin

A FREAK penguin that is bullied because of its unusual appearance has been found in Antarctica.

The Adelie penguin lacks pigmentation and is missing its trademark black “dinner jacket”, which is instead a dirty beige.

The bird was spotted by a team of Australian researchers restoring the historic Mawson’s Huts at Cape Denison.

It is not a full albino because it has some colouring, and is instead called a “leucistic” penguin.

It is rare to find an adult leucistic penguin as they stand out in the crowd and are usually gobbled up or attacked by predators — and there are no exceptions in this case.

On the Mawson’s Huts expedition blog, photographer Brett Jarrett described the hapless bird getting picked on and harassed by other penguins.

“At least this individual reached adulthood, even though while being observed was quite regularly picked on and harassed by other ‘normal’ Adelies,” Mr Jarrett said.

The penguin was first spotted by tourists on December 20 and by researchers on December 30.

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Brazil’s albino alligators stolen

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) — Seven albino alligators were stolen from the only zoo run by the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT), the university staff reported on Thursday.    Biologist Itamar Assumpcao, who is in charge of the administration of the zoo, told reporters that the alligators were last seen on Dec. 31.

    The federal police will investigate whether any staff member was involved in the theft. The alligators are suspected to be stolen for trade abroad.

    The total value of the animals, approximately two years old, was estimated at 119,000 reais (68,000 U.S. dollars) in the illegal market.

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Albino Slugs – Still Hate Salt

Albino Great Horned Owl

Aicuña, the Mysterious Albino Town

A study by John Hopkins University estimates that there is one albino for every seventeen thousand people in the world. In Aicuña, according to Julio César Ormeño, the head of the Vital Records Office, there live about three hundred people. At its most populous, he says, there have been three hundred and fifty. The town is so small that every inhabitant—including the newborns, the elderly, and the church minister—could fit into a movie theater.

Of that total, the head of the Vital Records Office has taken census of four albinos, all men—three that currently live in Aicuña and one who moved to another town two hours away. But his archives also say something more: since the end of the nineteenth century, forty-six albino births have been registered in Aicuña alone.

According to the math, the rate of albinism in Aicuña isn’t one in every seventeen thousand people but rather one in every ninety. Or as Dr. Eduardo Castilla, the author of “Aicuña: A Study of the Population’s Genetic Structure,” maintains: albinism is almost two hundred times more likely to occur in Aicuña than anywhere else on the planet.

Source and Source

Albino Squirrel in Columbus OH

 This cute little guy is currently living in Columbus OH and was photographed by Jennifer Gordon.

Florida Zoo to Feature Pair Of Albino Gators

Alligators are common at Florida wildlife attractions, but Lowry Park Zoo has started work on a unique way of showcasing the state’s signature reptile.A $1.5 million zoo expansion will house a pair of rare albino American alligators and a water flume ride called “Gator Falls.”

It is all scheduled to open in April, in time for the 20th anniversary of the Lowry Park Zoological Society, the nonprofit organization that manages and develops the zoo.

Beginning today, sections of the Florida habitat boardwalk will be closed so expansion can begin.

Albino alligators lack melanin, or pigment, in their skin, creating a milky coloring and cloudy eyes that appear to be pink.

The pair coming to Tampa were rescued from the Louisiana swamp and were acquired through an alligator farm in St. Augustine.

The male is about 8 months old and the female about 6 months old

“Because of their pigmentation and coloration, they wouldn’t typically last in the wild, so they have to be rescued when they’re young,” said Dana Metz, the zoo’s marketing director.

More…

Year in Review: Albino ghost raccoons?

2007 in review: In wildlife news, University of California, Santa Barbara’s albino raccoon passed away — only to be succeeded by a series of sightings of what some students say could be his extra-pale spirit, and others believe to be a brood of albino raccoon offspring.

More…

“Something in White” by Karen J. Weyant

“I’ve been missing snow. I know, sometime in late February or early March, I’m going to look back at this post and think that I was crazy, but we’ve had a brown season thus far. We did have some storms, but in a day or so, the snow had either melted or it had turned into these hard, black piles of slush and ice. So even though the mini-storm yesterday ruined our traveling plans for New Year’s Day, the landscape was beautiful. And today, it looks like the weather is clearing up just a bit — the sky is sporting a pinkish tint and the roads have been plowed. And the snow is still white.

It’s funny, but I’ve always been fascinated with white in nature. Perhaps this is because I grew up in Western PA where it seems at least half of the year sports a white winter coat. But in the lush green springs and the colorful falls, I’ve always looked for white — in flowers, in animals, in plants. I love albino animals, and even now, when I go home, I try to get my father to talk about the albino herd of deer that used to live by his farm when he was growing up (he may be exaggerating — it might not have been a whole herd, but he always has interesting stories!). Daisies are my favorite flowers. And I’ve already mentioned my desire to spot a white monarch.
 

But there’s one plant I would really like to see — the Ghost Plant or Indian Pipe pictured above. I know they are rare — and to be honest, I’m not even sure if I could possibly find them around here, but in the photos I’ve seen (This one is from Wikipedia), they look fascinating. And of course, the folklore behind these plants is just as fascinating. Some sources suggest that this plant, often also named the Corpse Plant, is so named because the long white tubes look like corpse fingers reaching out of the earth. Other sources suggest that the plants were once groups of Indians who smoked peace pipes — when the nature gods found out that they were smoking these pipes without permission they were turned into plants. (I am really paraphrasing here — so for any folklorists out there — please feel free to correct my stories).

I’m not sure why I am thinking of the Ghost Plant today. Perhaps it’s because this plant is trying to grow in one of my poems; but more than likely, it’s because when I first got up this morning, the sky looked like a ghost plant — almost translucent with just a hint of color. Now, however, the world has once again turned gray.”

Source

Gray area found with white buck

From The Columbus Dispatch 

A man in Boulder Junction, Wis., once took a photograph of three albino deer standing together. The odds of doing so, according to one unidentified math whiz, are an astronomical 1 in 79 billion.

How such numerical guesswork — or claptrap — is contrived must remain a mystery. Assuming the three whitetails actually were pigment-challenged albinos and not unusually white specimens, the mathematical probabilities lean on the prevalence, or the nonprevalence, of albinism in the deer population.

On that matter exists no easily verifiable scientific agreement, although the figure 1 in 30,000 is bandied about at various Google-aided landings in cyberspace as if it were the true and final word.

Better and more reliably sampled, however, are the brown-and-white piebalds that Ohio hunters take in tiny numbers almost every deer season.

“Bottom line, probably less than 1 percent of wild deer are piebalds,” wrote Ohio Division of Wildlife biologist Mike Tonkovich in response to an e-mail inquiry. “What does this have to do with incidence of true albinos in the population? Everything. We know that true albinistic deer are even more rare than piebalds in wild populations!”

Precisely how rare, though, Tonkovich was unable to say.

Casey Watterson, who operates Lone Leaf Custom Taxidermy near Mount Gilead in Morrow County, had not beheld an albino whitetail until recently.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said. “A hunter sees one, and it’s like hitting the lottery.”

On Oct. 14, Maurice A. King III of Mansfield held what must have felt like the lone winning ticket. That Sunday morning, King, a Bellville police officer, not only saw an albino buck, he killed it.

The ghost-white deer isn’t what King, 31, was after as he sat in his tree stand in a Richland County woods between Mansfield and Bellville. The buck that King had been chasing for two seasons carried 14 antler points but was otherwise normal.

“When the albino buck appeared, I immediately drew my bow to the ready position,” King said, “not to take aim at him, but hoping the big one also was around.”

If the big one was around, King couldn’t see it.

What kept drawing his utmost attention, however, was the wondrously pallid buck.

“The very first thing I noticed was his stunning pink eyes,” King said. “They looked like the eyes of someone who had real bad allergies. Then I looked at his pure-white body. His coat was perfect, and not a mark on it.”

King resisted putting his mark on that perfect, pure-white coat.

The deer appeared, ran off, then tantalizingly reappeared. The antlers at 5 or 6 points weren’t built to impress, and the body weight of perhaps 150 or 160 pounds wouldn’t feed a pack of coyotes for long. Still, the whiteness of the deer registered the way a floating apparition might. And at 20 yards distant, the pink-eyed specter was close. It kept getting closer.

“He slowly walked within 10 feet of my tree. He stopped and turned, positioning his body for yet another opportunity for a perfect shot,” King said. “After all this, I finally realized this must be ‘a sign’ for me to take him, so I did.”

The arrowed deer ran down a hill and crashed at the bottom, the hunter said, and didn’t get up.

King wondered again and for a while after whether he should have taken the white deer. He acknowledges that some people might wish he hadn’t. Other hunters, though, have shown great interest in King’s albino buck.

The pats on the back from hunters who’ve heard the whitetail story have assuaged some of the guilt, but public kicks in the derriere from animal lovers have had a different effect. Ambivalence about killing the once-in-a-lifetime deer perhaps is being demonstrated by King’s plans to “share” the deer with others.

Watterson last week began crafting a full-body mount of the albino deer, an expensive project for which compensation is yet to be determined. The mount likely will be finished by the end of January, the taxidermist said. The plan is to display the animal during the Deer & Turkey Expo in March.

“It should be a real draw,” Watterson said. “Hunters will want to see an albino deer.”

After that, it would be nice if the mount could be displayed in a local store for kids and others to see, King said.

The hope for next deer season, he said, is to kill the 14-pointer he passed up this time around. Odds are, though, the plan will be subject to change.

Albino Lake Trout are Tourist Attraction in CA Hatchery

“…We carried on to Mount Shasta City to visit the Sisson Museum and the state’s oldest fish hatchery, where monster-sized brown, rainbow and brook trout lurk. As a bonus, we viewed the rare albino Eagle Lake trout, bright gold in color. A hatchery worker said that out of 22 million eggs, six turned out to be albino.”   MORE….

Poor Little Albino Plants

When thinking of albinos, the plant kingdom is oft overlooked. Certainly, this makes sense as a chlorophyll-less plant is largely doomed, but that is not to say that such plants do not exist. The American Brugmansia and Datura Society reports that in the attempts to create new variegated cross hybrids of Brugmansia, a full 90% of all seedlings (like the one to the left) are pigment-less albinos that die soon after their endospermic nutrition is exhausted.

Albinos Targeted for Murders in Tanzania

When Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete addressed his nation on the first day of the new year, he denounced the horrific increasing trend of albinos (humans) being targeted for murders in order that their organs might be harvested.

‘There are also those who believe that possession of some organs of infants and albinos can turn them rich,’ Kikwete stated. The police have been ordered to crack down on such practices that Kikwete believes are tied to growing interest in witchcraft.

Tanzania’s Albino society recently complained that albinos were being targeted by some witch-doctors, following a string of murders.