Nature is full of beautiful and wonderful things, be it plants or animals. The more you explore it, the more amazing things you discover. We have seen beautiful animals, we love their colour and coats. We have seen birds with beautiful feathered-crowns with their distinct long and short tails.

Let us discover some species with unusual-colours, some being the result of mutation, some liesuim, some pied and some will leave you in disbelief. Let’s find out how and what makes these species distinct.

Spotless cheetah

This animal reminds me of the movie 101 Dalmatians II, in which a Dalmatians’ pair, (the dog breed famous for its spotty skin coat), gives birth to a spotless ‘rare’ puppy. The story revolves around this precious little spotless pup till the end. Coming to the real life, a similar case can be seen in the wild with this spotless cheetah! Yes, this spotless cheetah was spotted in Kenya in 2012 and the photographs were captured by Guy Coombs. According to Coombs, this morph phenomenon has not been seen for over 90 years … the last one recorded was shot in Tanzania in 1921.

White adult orca

The picture is taken from a video clip recorded in waters off Kamchatka peninsula (far eastern coast of Russia) in which a white orca is seen clearly floating and playing with its mother and siblings. Researchers have nicknamed it Iceberg. Even though completely white, the Iceberg seems to be fully acceptable by its family.

According to the group of scientists, they had only seen three white orcas in the past, but Iceberg is the first mature orca that they have spotted. The whale was last spotted in the mid of 2016 and according to the scientists, Iceberg, for his part, may be one of the lucky ones. He has already lived to male orca middle-age and is still apparently in good health.

Blue lobster

This blue lobster was pulled off from the waters of new England coast. The change in colour could be due to two main reasons: diet and genetics.

According to the researchers, from the top down, lobsters have three layers of distinct colours: yellow, blue and red. Human eyes can’t handle the layers so they only see brown. Rare lobsters with a different colour have to thank a genetic mutation in which one of the three layers of colour in their shell and cell tissues shows more or less prominently. “A blue lobster is blue because it is showing that middle pigment-protein layer,” Anita Kim, a lobster biologist at the New England Aquarium said.

Another interesting find was a white lobster, which was caught off Chebeague Island in Maine in 2017. This was believed to be a genetic blue lobster that turned pale because of what it had been eating (since it turned blue-ish after it moulted). Rare lobsters nearly span the colour spectrum — from blues, oranges and yellow, to calico and even a split-coloured orange and black. According to the Lobster Institute, split-coloured lobsters, which are found to be hermaphroditic, are a one-in-50 million find. Experts say white — also known as albino or “crystal” — lobsters are one-in-100 million.

White raven

The raven is a clever bird. They have always been considered powerful symbols in mythology and folklore. Their jet-black appearance with a shrilling caw makes them unique among all other birds. But among these black ravens, photographer Mike Yip easily spotted the white ravens which came to the coastal beach on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada.

Soon after that, Mr Yip become a fan of the white ravens and started capturing the birds in their true habitat. Technically, these ravens have a very rare genetic disorder called leucism, rather than albinism. The condition causes reduced pigmentation.

White ravens do not appear to survive long in the wild, possibly as a result of other genetic defects. White ravens are rare everywhere in the world except for the Qualicum region, where successive generations of white ravens were produced for about 20 years.

Black and white lion

Not everything that you read on the internet is true. For instance, sometime back, the pictures of a black lion emerged and many believed what they saw. But there are no black lions, the one seen had a dark and dense black mane.

So what about white lions? Yes, white lions are real and they are native to only the Greater Timbavati region of South Africa. According to the Global White Lion Protection Trust, the genetic marker that makes white lions unique has yet not been identified by scientists and research into the animals is ongoing.

Black chicken

This beautiful black chicken is also a real bird and not an edited picture; called the ayam cemani, a prized breed of Indonesian chicken; it is a result of a genetic mutation that produces a completely black bird, from beak to bone, with blue-black skin, jet-black eyes, and a black tongue — even its internal organs are black. The locals take the breed as sacred and believe it to have magical properties, thus the bird fetches up to $4,000 each.

Black chicken originates from Central Java, they are considered status symbols, good luck charms and are used in traditional medicine preparations to cure a variety of ailments across the island.

Black flamingo

This black flamingo made news in April 2017 when it was spotted among a flock of white and pink ones at the Akrotiri Environmental Centre on the Mediterranean island nation, Cyprus. The bird’s unusual plumage comes from a genetic condition called melanism, which causes excessive pigment to darken feathers.

The black flamingo was witnessed only once before, in a bird filmed in Israel in 2013. Flamingos obtain their rose pink colour from pigments in the organism they eat.

Black penguin

Once again we have a black coloured specie but this time it’s a penguin — a complete black, penguin. The animal was spotted by a National Geographic photographer in 2010, an ornithologist called it a “one-in-a-zillion kind of mutation.” This penguin has melanism — the over-production of melanin, the pigment, that gives colour to the skin.

Venus, the Chimera cat

She is the most famous cat right now, with her own Facebook page. Why? Because Venus has a two-coloured body, one half is tortoiseshell with the face black and the other side is orange and patterned like a tabby. The black half has a green eye, the orange half’s eye is blue.

No one knows what and how Venus got these colours, but many believe that she’s a chimera.

Chimera parakeet

Also known as half-sider, these birds are actually two genetically distinct individuals fused into one.

It happens when cells from twins fuse into one individual, then both populations of cells retain their individual characteristics. One such characteristic is plumage colour. This parakeet has two distinct cell populations visible because they possess two distinct plumage colour genes: one encodes the normal “wild type” green colour whilst the other encodes the blue colour morph.

White deer

In Seneca county, New York, the Seneca white deer are found. They are variant of the brown-coated white tailed deer, odocoileus virginianus. These white deer are leucistic, which means their hair has no pigment but their eyes are as brown as any other deer.

This is a less extreme mutation than albinism, which would leave the deer’s eyes pink. They make up 25 percent of the approximately 800 deer living in the area, making them the world’s largest population of mutant animals living in a single habitat.

White elephant

Despite their name, white elephant aren’t white. They’re pink or reddish-brown, and their rare mutation is more common in Asian elephants than in African elephants. White elephants suffer from albinism.

Brown pandas

The great panda has just one subspecies, and that’s the brown panda bear. It’s also known as the Qinling bear after its home in China’s Qinling mountains. Qinlings have dark brown fur where most pandas have black fur, and lighter tan fur where most pandas are white. Scientists say that these differently coloured bears probably came about when regular pandas indulged in inbreeding.

There could be hundreds out there hiding in the mountains, but scientists have so far only seen five actual specimens.

White alligator

White alligators are a rare sight. It is thought that there are only 12 leucistic gators around the world. Apart from that, mutation can also occur at the time of incubation, if the eggs in the nest get a little bit too hot, it can lead to errors in cell divisions and can cause mutations.

The pink grasshopper

This beautiful natural species is very rare and called meadow grasshopper. These grasshoppers rarely survive till adulthood because they’re so visible to predators.

Their condition is called erythrism, an unusual and little-understood genetic mutation caused by a recessive gene similar to that which affects albino animals. This mutation results in reduced or even no normal pigments, and/or the excessive production of other pigments, in this case red which results in pink morphs.

Bi-coloured peacocks

This beautiful feathered bird is the result of piebald mutation.

Colour mutations

Let’s find out why these animals and birds get colour mutations

Albinism

Albinism is found in all species; the most widely seen mutations in humans, animals and birds. Albinism is present at birth, it is a condition in which there is a lack of the pigment melanin, which typically gives colour to the eyes, skin and hair. Thus, as a result, the hair becomes light brown or golden while the skin turns pink or pale in humans; in animals and birds, it usually displays as yellow or pink skin, hair coat and pink eyes.

Leucism

Often confused with albinism (which is caused by lack of pigment melanin) leucism is caused by a reduction in all types of skin pigment and not just melanin.

Animals that are referred to as “white”, such as the white zebra, white lion, or white tiger, are leucistic as opposed to albino. Moreover, leucistic animals can still have the colour black present in their coats, as well as normal coloured or black eyes.

Piebald

Piebald is a colour mutation that occurs when there is a lack of pigmentation in certain parts of animals’ bodies. Therefore, a spotting pattern occurs with the intermixing of pigmented and non-pigmented hair, skin or feathers.

The condition makes the animal look very interesting with spots on various parts of their body. Piebald is most commonly found among horses, dogs, cats, birds, pigs, cattle and even snakes like the ball python.

Chimera

Chimeras are the result of two embryos fusing together in the womb. It refers to an individual organism that consists of genetically distinct cells. This mutation can present itself in many ways, including gynandromorphism (containing both male and female characteristics), having two separate blood types, or having two distinct appearances on one body. The species born with a chimera condition usually have a distinct colouring on the animal’s left and right sides, as well as the genetics of each gender on each side of its body.— F. H.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 2nd, 2019