--- On Wed, 5/14/08, Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
From: Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>
Subject: Re: Albino Dino
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 5:08 PM
David Krentz wrote:
If a meat eating dinosaur was born albino, what kind
of limitations
would that put on its lifestyle?
Dying very young tends to put a dampener on most
creatures' lifestyles. :)
Albinos in the wild tend to be predator magnets in most
instances, not only
because they're easier to see (unless they happen to
live in the snow or on salt
flats), but because their own eyesight is generally poor
(which, it would seem,
would counter-act anything beneficial about living in
high-glare environments
like snow or salt flats).
Even non-albino animals born with unusual white colouration
(like lions or
tigers for instance) tend to have a hard time of things,
even if their eyesight
is normal. They still stick out like sore thumbs to
predators, and still have a
much higher rate of skin cancers than their normally
coloured relatives. Unusual
colouration can also lead to individuals being shunned by
others of their own
species, which can limit their reproductive success
(assuming they live long
enough to reach adulthood of course).
Hence why white lions and tigers are extremely rare in the
wild - and why, in my
oppinion, zoos should sterilise their white animals at
birth
Amen to that. Pursuit of the unusual is inappropriate w/ such animals.
BTW, when I get my time machine going, we can go looking for white
dinos; I'll take the vid while you do the sterilizations.
Heh. Can you imagine a trank gun for dino's? Sheesh.
rather than
encourage such maladaptive traits (assuming there are plans
to re-introduce
captive bred animals into the wild at some point in the
future). Non-albino
white animals in captivity also tend to have higher rates
of medical problems,
which suggests that the white colouration is just the
immediately visible
consequence of more serious genetic problems. I suspect the
health problems of
true albinos are even worse.
So the outlook for an albino dinosaur would seem to have
been bleak. Perhaps a
nocturnal polar tro-odon might have fared (very) slightly
better.
--
___________________________________________________________________
Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist
Http://geo_cities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia
http://heretichides.soffiles.com
___________________________________________________________________