There have been documented cases of individuals with white or abnormally light coloring in animals
that are not typically white in the majority of major animal groups. These unusually colored animals are
incredibly rare, and because certain cultures view them as lucky charms or having therapeutic abilities in
traditional medicine, poachers highly prize them.
Albinism and leucism are the two main disorders that result in non-white animals being born white or
another uncommon hue. Both ailments impair an animal’s capacity to create melanin, a skin pigment
that most animals have in some quantity and which gives their skin, hair, and eyes their color. A
hereditary disorder called albinism hinders the generation of melanin in all of an animal’s cells, leading
to a lack of coloration. Leucism can result in entire or partial color loss or change because it affects
individual pigment-producing cells.
The year 2021 was exceptional for stories involving leucism and albinism. Every year, just one or two of
these animals make the news, but in 2021, a lot of them caught our eye.
• Chimp infanticide
A chimpanzee troop in Sierra Leone experienced an unusual case of infanticide in 2016 when a young
albino chimp was killed by adult males in the troop. The case was documented in a study that was
released in July.
The albino baby’s murder was not actually observed by the researchers, but they did observe a rise in
hostile behavior between some males and the chimp’s mother before the child was killed. The albino
chimp’s arm was removed when the body was eventually discovered by researchers; this finding shows
that one of the troop’s males killed the youngster.
Why the males killed the newborn was a mystery to the researchers. The most straightforward answer
was that it was colorless. The researchers hypothesize that the chimpanzees may have had additional
motivation because infanticide is exceptionally common among them.
• Rare yellow penguin
On South Georgia, a remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, wildlife photographer Yves Adams
captured some incredible images of a yellow king penguin in 2019. He shared the images with the world
for the first time in February.
According to Adams, “I’d never seen or heard of a yellow penguin before.” “This was the solitary yellow
bird among the 120,000 that were on that beach. When we discovered it, we all lost our minds. We put
all the safety gear down and picked up our cameras.
Although they are unaware of the specific cause of the yellow coloration, scientists believe it to be a sort
of leucism. Small amounts of this yellow pigment are naturally produced by all king penguins, but in this
particular bird, it appears to be the only pigment that the animal can produce.
• Real-life Moby Dick
Off the coast of Jamaica on November 29, sailors on board a Dutch gas tanker noticed a rare white
sperm whale that resembled the one in the literary classic “Moby Dick.” The ship’s captain managed to
get a fleeting glimpse of the eerie cetacean near the water’s surface on camera.
At the time, Shane Gero, a sperm whale specialist at Dalhousie University in Canada and the director of
the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, told Live Science that “we don’t know how rare white sperm whales
are.” Since they can stay underwater for extended periods of time, white sperm whales can occasionally
be seen, but they are difficult to monitor and research.
However, that is just my assumption. “The whale in Jamaica is very white, and my guess is that it’s an
albino,” Gero said. He continued that taking DNA samples would be the only way to know for sure.
• White tiger cub
Early in January, a rare white tiger cub was born in a zoo in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the mother of the
cub, who was eventually reared by humans and was given the name Nieve (which means “snow” in
Spanish), rejected it.
Unusual for Bengal tigers, the cub’s parents were both orange (Panthera tigris Tigris). How then could
two orange tigers give birth to a white cub? The tiger’s white coloring is caused by a recessive genetic
mutation, which means two copies of the gene are required for expression. They were both orange
because each tiger parent only had one copy of the defective gene, but both also passed the recessive
characteristic to their cub. The red and yellow pigments that give tigers their orange color cannot be
produced by white tigers due to the recessive gene mutation. However, black pigments can still be
produced by white tigers. This indicates that although the disorder has a comparable impact, it is neither
albinism nor leucism.
