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Albino & Leucistic Animals (Pigmentation Deficiency)

Albino tortoise

albinotortoise.jpg
 
How cute is this little chap?


Using a motion-activated camera, scientists at Wolong National Nature Reserve in southwest China have snapped a blurry but unprecedented photograph of the world’s first known albino giant panda.

The all-white giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) was photographed in April as it was roaming through a bamboo forest at an altitude of 2,000 meters, according to a press release issued by the local conservation authority. The park in which the panda was observed, Wolong National Nature Reserve, is located in the southwest Chinese province of Sichuan.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/05/camera-trap-snaps-photo-of-first-known-albino-giant-panda/
 
Are we sure it's not a polar bear on holiday?
 
It's clearly a Yeren imitating an albino Panda/polar bar to evade detection.
 
I don't think an albino porcupine has ever been reported on this thread before ...

All-white creature identified as rare albino porcupine
A curious visitor to a Maine train museum that resembled a white throw pillow or perhaps a lost toupee turned out to be a rare albino porcupine.

The young rodent turned up Tuesday at Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, perplexing the staff, who sought help identifying it via social media. The consensus was it’s an albino porcupine.

The Portland Press Herald reports the animal appeared to be a baby because its quills had not yet hardened. A spokeswoman for the museum said midday Wednesday that it hadn’t yet been seen again, but it was assumed to be lurking in the area.

... About one of every 10,000 of the species is an albino porcupine.
SOURCE (With PHoto): https://www.apnews.com/7136bf2b0da4489caa4cb8704f05e4f6
 
photo_2019-08-01_23-35-46.jpg

Apologies for the poor photo, but my camera's batteries thought this the ideal time to die on me, leaving me with my phone. These are three of four young mustelids I encountered on my way home last night, two of which were bright white! They were tumbling and rolling together halfway down a lane to a smallholding, and I was able to get within feet of them, as the photo indicates.

I thought, at first, they were polecats - which is incredibly exciting for me before you even take the white ones into account - but a family member noted the possibility they were escaped/feral ferrets. After all what are the chances of two leucistic/albino cubs in one wild litter?

What do you fine Fortean folk think?

(PS: Rest assured, next time I'm passing that way I'll have fully charged camera batteries and a fully charged headlight; just in case!)
 
I'm not an expert, but those do look like ferrets to me; the wild, brown colour in ferrets is called 'polecat' though, and they are so closely related to polecats that they will hybridise.
 

Rare white squirrel photographed in Royal Deeside


A rare white squirrel has been photographed in Royal Deeside.
Experts said it was believed to be a red rather than a grey squirrel as it had the hairy ear tufts absent in greys.
The squirrel was snapped by conservationists working to protect red squirrel populations in the north east of Scotland.
They said they would now work to determine whether or not the animal was a "true albino" with red eyes.

Conservationist Dr Gwen Maggs said: "We will set up some remote cameras to try and get some better pictures with a clear view of its eyes.
"In any event, this is a rare and exciting discovery."
(c)BBC.'19
 


At Beamish Museum in County Durham they have a warehouse full of stuff that's been donated and they haven't found a home for yet. One section is full of stuffed animal heads and pinned butterflies, in which there's a glass case with two albino Red Squirrels.
A sign of how abundant Reds once were that someone was lucky enough to bag a brace.
 
Video alert!

White squirrel 'hotspots' investigated in Sussex

Claire Brimacombe was walking through a park in East Sussex last February, when her eyes suddenly fell on a white squirrel.
After she kept on the seeing the unusual rodent - only one in 100,000 are born albino - in the Alfriston park, she decided to start recording the sightings, noting apparent hotspots for them in the county.
Now a website she set up records white squirrel sightings from across the UK, and Claire has appealed for help in investigating why there seem to be so many across the country.
(C) BBC. '19
 
My stupid camera had auto focus, which meant that it tried so hard to keep the background in focus at the expense of what is directly in front and I couldn't override it. Anyway, there was something on the buddleia that was blurry enough to be a spider "ghost", but I've never had a spider rear up its front legs at me before when I tried to take a photo. There was a colony of albino scorpions at my local railway station (more common in the UK than people realise) but the body-shape here says garden spider even though the waving front legs were big enough to be claws.

Albino1192.jpg Albino1195.jpg
 
My stupid camera had auto focus, which meant that it tried so hard to keep the background in focus at the expense of what is directly in front and I couldn't override it. Anyway, there was something on the buddleia that was blurry enough to be a spider "ghost", but I've never had a spider rear up its front legs at me before when I tried to take a photo. There was a colony of albino scorpions at my local railway station (more common in the UK than people realise) but the body-shape here says garden spider even though the waving front legs were big enough to be claws.

View attachment 21445 View attachment 21446


That isn't an albino though, it's a Crab Spider.
http://uksafari.com/crabspider.htm
 
Okay, hands up everyone who's seen a crab spider ("common in the Southern half of the UK") before.
As they eat bees I guess the Buddleia was a good spot to lurk (even though the spider was pure white).

I've never seen one before. You can't tell by the picture, so I'm wondering how common are they and how large do they get?
 
My stupid camera had auto focus, which meant that it tried so hard to keep the background in focus at the expense of what is directly in front and I couldn't override it.
Um, I may speak for other arachnophobes as well as myself when I say that it's probably just as well the spider wasn't in focus . . .

how large do they get?
I don't know either, Michael59, but in my imagination they are GIGANTIC!

Bad Bungle, if you want to take a picture of an albino butterfly or bee or something, see if your camera has something like a macro lens function. That allows you to take close ups that are nice and crisp.
 
I've never seen one before. You can't tell by the picture, so I'm wondering how common are they and how large do they get?

In the link I posted, 'Head and body - up to 10mm'.
Female Garden Spiders grow up to 13mm, so they are pretty large for UK spiders.

One interesting fact about Crab Spiders is that they can slowly change colour over a few days to match their surroundings. Either white, yellow or green so perhaps a lack of flowers in those colours forced this one onto a purple plant. Point being, they are masters of camouflage when they get the right kind of flower, so you'd be lucky to spot one at all.
 
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I don't know either, Michael59, but in my imagination they are GIGANTIC!

Mine too. :freak:

Back in in 1993, I was renting a small house. It had one of those sheds made of tin in the back yard. A white spider the size of a tarantula (I kid you not) made a web across the doors in the front and it was so thick we had a hard time breaking it apart. One of the neighborhood kids killed the white spider. I remember watching him as he did it, he was freaking out, I mean literally losing a grip on reality as he did this. He was screaming and jumping around as he mashed it into the ground. It was disturbing to watch. I think he was more afraid of spiders than I am.

It was the first time in my life I had ever seen a white spider.
 
Mine too. :freak:

Back in in 1993, I was renting a small house. It had one of those sheds made of tin in the back yard. A white spider the size of a tarantula (I kid you not) made a web across the doors in the front and it was so thick we had a hard time breaking it apart. One of the neighborhood kids killed the white spider. I remember watching him as he did it, he was freaking out, I mean literally losing a grip on reality as he did this. He was screaming and jumping around as he mashed it into the ground. It was disturbing to watch. I think he was more afraid of spiders than I am.

It was the first time in my life I had ever seen a white spider.
That's very odd. Where abouts do you live?
 
Um, I may speak for other arachnophobes as well as myself when I say that it's probably just as well the spider wasn't in focus . . .
Bad Bungle, if you want to take a picture of an albino butterfly or bee or something, see if your camera has something like a macro lens function.

Doesn't have a macro lens function but does have a built-in Fortean Foto function - if I try to capture an unusual sight then the image will be indistinct or ambiguous or the battery dies at that moment.
 
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