Calling Captain Ahab...

[Garnet]

White killer whale spotted. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/07/white.killer.whale.ap/index.html)

[Octavia]

That's really cool! I wonder if its colouring has any effect socially - don't birds that look different from the norm get picked on?

(Stupid question, I suppose, but my biology training has been in seaweed, so what do you expect?)

[Garnet]

My biology training was in...er...wait...I don't have any. :p

I almost flunked Bio 101 in college because I wouldn't handle crickets for lab.

ETA: I saw another story this week about a dolphin helping to rescue a couple of whales. I need to find that and post it here.

[Matty]

most albinos are at a significant selective disadvantage of course, sheerly out of conspicuity, and in the case of a known pack hunter like a killer whale i guess it could have adverse implications for the whole pod so it could cause social snubbing i guess. whether such a thing had been observed in cetaceans i have no idea but their social structure is known to be important to them. i think thats part of the issue with birds too, the obvious plumage highlights that bit of the flock to predators so they are all like "fuck off and stand somewhere else whitey, i dont want to be near when the sparrowhawk nails your silly looking tail",

heh Octavia i did a little bit of seaweed stuff back when i was a baby lab assistant, some cromatic adaptation though the water column, and nitogen cycling implications in algal blooms in the North Sea. Although it wasnt quite the diving with sharks vision i had in mind working for a marine lab i must admit, but it was bloody interesting and it taught my my way around a lab

[Octavia]

^It can be quite cool, I admit. :) I can say that happily, the HPLC machine not having thrown a fit today.

Garnet, that whale and dolphin story was down here in NZ:

A dolphin has come to the rescue of two whales which had become stranded on a beach in New Zealand.

Conservation officer Malcolm Smith told the BBC that he and a group of other people had tried in vain for an hour and a half to get the whales to sea.

The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached, and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said.

But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety....

Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7291501.stm).

"The dolphin" being Moko - he's pretty well known. :)

[Garnet]

That's it! Thanks for posting it, Octavia. I think that is one of the neatest stories I've read in a long time.

[Matty]

^It can be quite cool, I admit. :) I can say that happily, the HPLC machine not having thrown a fit today.

Ah, you spend half your time flushing capilliaries and swearing at temperamental tech equipment too eh.

I'm a flow cytometrist, hear me swear. :)

[Octavia]

It finally came right after my supervisor ripped open its guts and threatened to drop it off the wharf. :)

[Matty]

heh,
i remeber a great but nerdy cartoon in the cytometry journal titled "Two Perspectives of flow cytometry" the outside view was a guy in a suit with a beautiful dotplot produced from a shiny new machine sat neatly on the bench next to him, and with a crowd of other white coated scientists applauding him,

The inside one was some scruffy dude ripping the fuck out of the machine , spilling buckets of stuff all over the place while hes knocking the shit out of it with a hammer, sweating, and swearing copiously and loudly.

so true, and what i know of HPLC is similar.

[Octavia]

Ha! So true is right. HPLC is definitely the latter. One of the other girls in the lab just came back from doing some HPLC stuff in Texas - and she spent at least half her several weeks there on the phone to tech help as the stupid thing wouldn't work, and needed to be gutted and put back together again before deciding to (grudgingly) cooperate.

[Arctish]

most albinos are at a significant selective disadvantage of course, sheerly out of conspicuity, and in the case of a known pack hunter like a killer whale i guess it could have adverse implications for the whole pod so it could cause social snubbing i guess. whether such a thing had been observed in cetaceans i have no idea but their social structure is known to be important to them. i think thats part of the issue with birds too, the obvious plumage highlights that bit of the flock to predators so they are all like "fuck off and stand somewhere else whitey, i dont want to be near when the sparrowhawk nails your silly looking tail",

heh Octavia i did a little bit of seaweed stuff back when i was a baby lab assistant, some cromatic adaptation though the water column, and nitogen cycling implications in algal blooms in the North Sea. Although it wasnt quite the diving with sharks vision i had in mind working for a marine lab i must admit, but it was bloody interesting and it taught my my way around a lab

I am not a biologist but I used to be a naturalist on tour boats in Southeast Alaska. We occasionally got lucky enough to see a pod of killer whales hunting. From what I observed I don't think the pale color would be much of a drawback for that orca.

A lot of orca pods feed exclusively or almost exclusively on fish. They are called resident pods because they prefer to stay within fairly well defined "home" regions. They go after the herring, pollack, salmon, and whatever else fishy they find. Those pods can be pretty big and the orca in them tend to be really chatty. A pale colored adult might have a bit more trouble catching fish but probably no more then a pale colored seal.

The other type of orca pods are the transients. Those are the ones that hunt marine mammals. I've seen transient orca hunt and they are very good at setting ambushes. Orca are smart enough to turn the ability to scare porpoise and seals into an asset. A pale colored orca could easily act as one of the drivers who get the prey animal to swim toward the rest of the pod lying in wait. Once they make a kill the entire pod celebrates and shares the meat.

The article doesn't identify the pod this male belongs to. It would be interesting to see if he's a resident or a transient.

One thing that struck me, though, is that the pale color is very similar to the color of a newborn orca. A newborn is a pale pinkish beige color in all the parts that will later turn black (we saw one once!). Perhaps to orca eyes the male's looks inspire feelings of protectiveness and affection.

[Dlx2]

More albino whales:

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200308/r7927_18291.jpg

http://www.whalelove.org/raw/image_full/en/wagon/fun-stuff/pictures/gppict-6082046.jpg

http://www.whalecenter.org/images/featured/albinogmlarge.jpg

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/images/albino-dolphin.jpg


Hooray for awesome mutations.

[Garnet]

Wow!

[Dlx2]

Albinos are pretty ubiquitous. There are some really funny looking ones out there. Examples:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_9gbYHPyGGHU/Rr453wu-C8I/AAAAAAAAANA/gIxwcfDiLvk/s400/monkey_one_black_one_white_albino_chimp.jpg

http://www.wherelightmeetsdark.com/images/newswatch/Albino_ratfish.jpg

http://www.elasmodiver.com/Sharkive%20images/Albino%20Sandtiger%20Shark%20002.jpg

http://www.great-florida-vacations.com/image-files/albino-alligator_1.jpg


Google image search FTW.

[Pavlov's Dog]

The link says that it is probably not an albino, based on the coloration.

[Dlx2]

The link says that it is probably not an albino, based on the coloration.

If it's not amelanistic, then please, with your infinite wisdom, why don't you suggest an explanation for why it's lacking melanophores?

[Pavlov's Dog]

If it's not amelanistic, then please, with your infinite wisdom, why don't you suggest an explanation for why it's lacking melanophores?

It is not my fucking infinite wisdom. It is the infinite wisdom of the biologist quoted in the article. Also, if you read the article you will note that the whale has a subtle yellow or brownish color, and is not completely white. So, it is doubtful that it is completely amelanistic and lacking melanophores. Try reading it. So, you can write the biologist a smart-alecky letter and leave me out of it. But then again, you almost have a bachelor's degree so that would make you an expert in this kind of thing that would not need to read the article.

[Dlx2]

It is not my fucking infinite wisdom. It is the infinite wisdom of the biologist quoted in the article. Also, if you read the article you will note that the whale has a subtle yellow or brownish color, and is not completely white. So, it is doubtful that it is completely amelanistic and lacking melanophores. Try reading it. So, you can write the biologist a smart-alecky letter and leave me out of it. But then again, you almost have a bachelor's degree so that would make you an expert in this kind of thing that would not need to read the article.

The biologist quoted in the article is wrong. Period. The animal is not producing melanin. This condition is called albinism. Generally, this is a result of a dysfunctional tyrosinase gene, but without access to this animal's DNA, no one could determine exactly what's going on with this animal's genes. It's pretty clear, though, that this animal lacks melanin, or else it would have, you know, black markings on its skin.

My guess is the guy is a whale ecologist, and he made some comment off the cuff when the whole of his job description involved tracking migration patterns and the press jumped on that one sentence, then tossed in some random crap about albinism being inherently unhealthy (the issue is chromosomal linkage of other defects, which would not be the case here). Hell, for all you and I know, the reporter misheard something and made something up on the fly. I have a few friends who have been interviewed by various news sources and they invariably get misquoted by overzealous reporters.

[Arctish]

The biologist quoted in the article is wrong. Period. The animal is not producing melanin. This condition is called albinism. Generally, this is a result of a dysfunctional tyrosinase gene, but without access to this animal's DNA, no one could determine exactly what's going on with this animal's genes. It's pretty clear, though, that this animal lacks melanin, or else it would have, you know, black markings on its skin.

My guess is the guy is a whale ecologist, and he made some comment off the cuff when the whole of his job description involved tracking migration patterns and the press jumped on that one sentence, then tossed in some random crap about albinism being inherently unhealthy (the issue is chromosomal linkage of other defects, which would not be the case here). Hell, for all you and I know, the reporter misheard something and made something up on the fly. I have a few friends who have been interviewed by various news sources and they invariably get misquoted by overzealous reporters.

It probably is not a true albino given the subtle coloration, said John Durban, a research biologist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.<link> (http://http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/337246.html)

He might be wrong but he's not a whale ecologist. He's a NOAA research biologist. A quick Google search is turning up some published works like this (http://http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17050170), so I think it's safe to assume the guy is a credible source.

The report on NOAA's website includes the same statement regarding the orca's coloration:

This whale is likely not a true albino because it still has signs of darker pigmented areas on its body. <link> (http://http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/newsreleases/2008/whitehwhale030608.htm)

It should be noted that there are degrees of albinism. Not all forms of albinism result in pink eyes and very white skin. Some milder forms of albinism can result in insufficient melanin rather than no melanin. That might be the source of the "not a true albino" confusion. An albino can still have some pigmentation.

The linked article answered one of my questions, though.
There are two types of killer whales: fish eaters and marine mammal eaters. The killer whales the researchers spotted were fish eaters.

[Pavlov's Dog]

The biologist quoted in the article is wrong. Period. The animal is not producing melanin. This condition is called albinism. Generally, this is a result of a dysfunctional tyrosinase gene, but without access to this animal's DNA, no one could determine exactly what's going on with this animal's genes. It's pretty clear, though, that this animal lacks melanin, or else it would have, you know, black markings on its skin.

Yes, you don't have any access to anything. I don't have any black spots on my skin, so am I not producing melanin?

My guess is the guy is a whale ecologist, and he made some comment off the cuff when the whole of his job description involved tracking migration patterns and the press jumped on that one sentence, then tossed in some random crap about albinism being inherently unhealthy (the issue is chromosomal linkage of other defects, which would not be the case here). Hell, for all you and I know, the reporter misheard something and made something up on the fly. I have a few friends who have been interviewed by various news sources and they invariably get misquoted by overzealous reporters.

Your guess would be wrong.

[Dlx2]

He might be wrong but he's not a whale ecologist. He's a NOAA research biologist. A quick Google search is turning up some published works like this (http://http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17050170), so I think it's safe to assume the guy is a credible source.

The report on NOAA's website includes the same statement regarding the orca's coloration:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=john+durban+author:j-durban&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&start=0&sa=N

He primarily works on population size estimates and migration patterns. Just because he works for he NOAA doesn't mean he's not a whale ecologist.

It should be noted that there are degrees of albinism. Not all forms of albinism result in pink eyes and very white skin. Some milder forms of albinism can result in insufficient melanin rather than no melanin. That might be the source of the "not a true albino" confusion. An albino can still have some pigmentation.

Indeed. It is not necessarily amelanistic. It could be hypomelanistic, or even leucistic. The question is a matter of which genes were knocked out. The animal is still not producing the normal amounts of melanin, though.

[Berthold]

German distinguishes: A white animal that does not totally lack pigment is a Weissling (http://www.naturfoto-cz.de/stockente-weissling-foto-1007.html).

I'm aware that, linguistically, this is just a translation of albino; in the meaning, as used by zoologists, it's not. If you google for weissling, you will get an awful lot of butterflies, because that's what a group of them is called.

[Arctish]

German distinguishes: A white animal that does not totally lack pigment is a Weissling (http://www.naturfoto-cz.de/stockente-weissling-foto-1007.html).

I'm aware that, linguistically, this is just a translation of albino; in the meaning, as used by zoologists, it's not. If you google for weissling, you will get an awful lot of butterflies, because that's what a group of them is called.

That is a very beautiful duck. In the wild she wouldn't have much luck hiding from foxes and weasels while she broods but in captivity I imagine she'd do very well. Lots of people would want to feed "the pretty one".

[Pavlov's Dog]

That is a very beautiful duck. In the wild she wouldn't have much luck hiding from foxes and weasels while she broods but in captivity I imagine she'd do very well. Lots of people would want to feed "the pretty one".

That is how Donald survived.

[Berthold]

That is a very beautiful duck. In the wild she wouldn't have much luck hiding from foxes and weasels while she broods but in captivity I imagine she'd do very well. Lots of people would want to feed "the pretty one".
Oh, they did! :wave:

Domestic (http://www.flickr.com/photos/7889951@N07/2209282443/) duck (http://www.critterzone.com/gallery/bird-duck-domestic-aflac-gallery.htm) pics (http://www.flyyy.com/public/English/send.pl?card_id=7990&&st=randomhome) :D