This rare albino gray kangaroo lives at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. What is albinism? Surviving with albinism Albino wildlife may face obstacles in nature.
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Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. This gives those affected a unique appearance and the animals that are affected stand out from the rest of their species Here are pictures of some beautiful albino animals:. Reuters Wallaby - A newborn albino wallaby joey lies obediently in its mother's safe bag at a zoo in the Czech Republic.
In March an 3-month-old albino penguin made its debut appearance at the Gdansk Zoo in Gdansk, Poland. A rare albino wallaby joey called Alisa is seen inside an enclosure at a zoo in Kazan, Russia. According to zookeepers the newborn wallaby is inquisitive and calm. The female blonde-haired orangutan, a rare species in contrast to these hominids with usually reddish-brown coats, was discovered in in a remote village in Kapuas Hulu district, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia.
A Japanese Rat Snake with rare albinism is seen at a snake viewing facility in Iwakuni, southwestern Japan. Rare white and pink albino dolphin swimming with its mates in the South Australian Ocean in March A rare species of albino Axalotti fish. A type of salamander that uniquely spends its whole life in its larval form, crawls inside an aquarium at Aquaria KLCC in Kuala Lumpur. Videos News India. The rate of partial albinism among swallows near Chernobyl jumped from 0 percent before to 15 percent in Lack of normal pigmentation has also been seen occasionally en masse in amphibians such as toads and salamanders.
Last summer, Oregon biologist Jay Bowerman found thousands of unusually pale individuals in a population of western toad tadpoles. The scientist captured some of the white tadpoles and observed that they remained healthy even though they did not transform into adulthood. He surmises that the phenomenon could have resulted from a genetic mutation that disrupted the production of both hormones and pigments needed for metamorphosis.
Eventually, the white tadpoles in the lake disappeared, while those Bowerman kept in an aquarium lived on, leading him to suspect that they were far easier for predators to find than the darker tadpoles.
Wherever they range, albinos do face a lot of obstacles to survival. Many albino birds, for instance, have brittle feathers that may be worn away more quickly than usual. Lacking a full complement of eye pigments, true albinos often have poor eyesight and are unusually sensitive to sunlight. Researchers have observed shunned albinos among species as disparate as ravens, barn swallows and red-winged blackbirds. Because of such ostracism, the animals are less likely to reproduce and pass on their genes.
In the s, University of Georgia researcher Donald Kaufman conducted a series of experiments with normal-colored and albino mice to see whether predators preferentially chose one or the other.
When Kaufman released captive barn owls and eastern screech owls in enclosures containing one brown and one albino mouse, the owls generally pounced on the albinos. So did shrikes, but only when dense vegetation was present in the study area, thus allowing the brown mice to camouflage themselves better than the albinos. When Kaufman repeated the experiment with shrikes in open areas, the avian predators captured more brown than albino mice.
This led him to conclude that visually oriented predators use a particular search image. In areas with sparse cover, where both types of mice were highly visible, shrikes pounced on the brown mice they most readily recognized from past hunting experiences. The odd coloring apparently helped protect the albinos. Other, more recent field experiments have further detailed the extent to which albinism is a handicap varies with the environment.
In the early s, a group of researchers from Miami University in Ohio trapped an albino meadow vole during a field study. By mating that male with darker, naturally colored wild females, and then mating the resulting young with one another, the team produced more than albinos. These were released, along with the darker voles, in a grassy enclosure.
Barrett, an ecologist who oversaw the study and is now at the University of Georgia. In fact, the albinos had a greater rate of survival during late fall and early winter. The reason, say the scientists, had a lot to do with the quality of habitat. The main predators on the test plots were raptors, which were stymied in their pursuit of both types of voles by dense, matted grasses, under which the voles could easily tunnel and hide.
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