Again, my weakness for cute animals takes hold. I
saw a piece
on Yahoo News about a
href="http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Buenos-Aires/photo//071102/photos_od_afp/d6b664898c02c8a712b81c441e343e56//s:/afp/20071102/od_afp/argentinaaustraliaanimalkangaroo_071102005235;_ylt=AuUk1l0pYqwPyI7YihPOxZmhOrgF">white
baby kangaroo born in a zoo in Argentina, a
canguro blanco. The only photo they have
is small:
So I tried to find a larger photo, one worthy of the
exacting
journalistic standards here at ScienceBlogs.
I did
find some others, not necessarily the same one:
href="http://www.elperiodicomediterraneo.com/noticias/noticia.asp?pkid=220910">
href="http://www.educared.org.ar/tamtam/archivos/2006/03/05/un_canguro_blanco.htm">
Plus, there is a really big picture, 1392x1590 pixels,
href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Kangaroo1.jpg">at
Wikipedia. You will have to click on the link to
see it.
Finally, there is a cute video of someone frolicking with her pet...
adorable face in that last picture!
When I lived in Kansas there was a zoo nearby (the Sunset Zoo, I think it was called?) that had a walk-through Australian exhibit, and one of their wallabies had an albino joey, it was really interesting. I know albino humans often have vision problems and other health issues, but I never saw any indication of impairments in the joey. Now that I think about it, albino lab rats and albino "pet bunnies" don't typically have those issues either, do the complications only occur in humans?
possibly not related, but i've met a fair few pure white cats (not albino) who are deaf.
that is so cute to look AT THE BABY
I've watched on-line for the availability of an adoptable blue- merle australian shepherd and learned that the crossing of 2 merle coated dogs, in this breed can lead to a "leathal white" pup- which is often deaf and blind. I also once knew an all- white boxer- dog who was deaf. Clearly, there's a genetic link here. Now, we need someone with the background in genetics to explain it to us ;)