Albino Tortoises

[Eweezyfosheezy]

NICE!!! EJ I've never seen that pic before. And Dean hit the nail on the head on how albinos are in the sun.

 

[HLogic]

They suffer essentially the same problems as any other amelanistic vertebrate mostly involving vision issues and sensitivity to the sun.

Note: Albino is a term usually only applied when amelanism occurs in mammals. Most other vertebrates produce several pigments (e.g. red = carotenoids, yellow = pteridines) independently and each can be affected by mutations to produce axanthic (no yellow), anerythristic (no red) or excesses in pigments; [hyper]melanistic, [hyper]xanthic or [hyper]erythristic (the "hyper" is usually omitted as the term itself refers to an elevated level). There are also hypo-chooseyourcolor (less than normal but not missing altogether) variations of varying magnitudes. The picture below illustrates one of the variations in Red-Foots.

Hypomelanistic RF <-- Click Here

OK, it's not an albino (normal colored eyes) but it's close!

 

[FranklinAndTara]

Personally i think it is very wrong to purposely breed and select albino tortoises or any animal. The few chance natural occurring animals are about enough of this unfortunate genetic mishap. Most of these animals would naturally die in the wild.

FrankAndTara evolution is never that fast it takes a few million years thousands at least. Domestic intentional selection of a mutation is what happened to produce rats and mice with pink eyes by the millions.

My info is probably wrong then! I was told that when there is no longer a need to camouflage themselves for survival that albino becomes more apparent. ill need to do more research.

 

[l0velesly]

Egyptian tortoises.

AW. Albino Egyptians!! That must be rare, considering the fact that they're near extinction too. I like their orangey skin tone.