Famous albino mammals
Famous albino mammals include Migaloo, a humpback whale living off the coast of Australia; Pinky, a bottlenose dolphin living in and around in Calcasieu Lake, Louisiana; Carolina Snowball, a popular albino bottlenose dolphin displayed at the Miami Seaquarium in the early 1960s; Snowflake, a Barcelona Zoo gorilla, and Mahpiya Ska, (Sioux for White Cloud), a buffalo in Jamestown, North Dakota, and inspiration for Herman Melvilles novel Moby-Dick, a sperm whale known as Mocha Dick. In birds
The most important pigments that determine plumage colouration in birds are melanines and carotenoids. The latter are ingested in food and transformed into colour pigments by enzymes. Aberrations in this pigmentation are mostly caused by food deficiencies and usually do not have a genetic basis. Well-known examples are flamingos, which owe their distinct pink colour to the presence of red carotenoids in their natural food. When these carotenoids are in short supply, these birds appear white after the next moult. Mutations causing changes in carotenoid-based colour pigments are rare; melanine mutations occur much more frequently. Two types of melanin, eumelanin and phaeomelanin, are present in birds. In the skin and eyes, only eumelanin is present. In some bird species, the colour is completely caused by eumelanin, however, both types of melanin are found in most species. In birds, albinism has been defined as "a total lack of both melanins in feathers, eyes and skin as a result of an inherited absence of tyrosinase", however, this ignores the effects of other pigments and structural colours.
These three strains are called "tremper albinos", "rainwater albinos" and "bell albinos". In amphibians
As with reptiles, many amphibians labeled as albino are, in fact, not completely lacking in all colour pigments. They are actually amelanistic, not albino. Amphibians have six types of chromatophore in their skin, i.e. melanophores, xanthophores, erythrophores, leucophores, cyanophores and iridophores. An amelanistic amphibian therefore, may still have various pigmentation. The incidence of albinism in frogs, salamanders, and newts is relatively higher than other taxa. It has been estimated that one in four hundred of these animals is albino. When albino tadpoles hatch, they are almost transparent. This may help camouflage them initially, however, after two weeks, when their hindlegs begin to emerge, they become milky white. A survey in 2001 found hundreds of tiny albino plains leopard frogs, but when the researcher returned a few months later, not a single albino adult could be found.In European Salamandridae, albinism has been recorded in the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra), gold-striped salamander (Chioglossa lusitanica), Italian crested newt (Triturus carnifex), marbled newt (Triturus marmoratus), Iberian ribbed newt (Pleurodeles waltl), alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris) and two sub-species of the smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris vulgaris and Lissotriton vulgaris meridionalis). Genetics
Genetic studies of albinism in amphibians have focused on mutations in the tyrosinase gene. The albino phenotype of the leopard frog (Rana pipiens) has been attributed to a failure in post-translational control in a single recessive tyrosinase gene which still has some tyrosinase and DOPA oxidase activity.