Albino C.e.p?

[TJ]

I hope this is what it seems to be -- the long-sought albino Cynops! Bidding starts at $1,000!

These C.e.p were all born at the same time. I'm used to seeing some color variation among C.e.p larvae, but nothing to this extent.

But if they are truly albino, wouldn't their eyes be red instead of black?

Would somebody who has raised C.ensicauda tell me whether this seems promising in their experience?

If so, I'd like to accord these larvae special treatment. I've heard of people keeping their newts in mineral water. If they're truly albinos, it's gonna be Perrier all the way for these guys!

 

[TJ]

There are three like this among the 40 or so in this batch of larvae, but none among the 25 or so in the batch that hatched weeks earlier.

These pics are all of the same semi-transparent individual after consuming a bloodworm or two, which accounts for the red color.

 

[reinder]

hi

i have seen this in many larvae this unusually colorvariant,i hope for you tim it,s albino
but i won't give you much hope , i have seen it in c.e.e to,some of my larvae where the same color as yours and developed just like normal ones,but again keep us posted.!!!
sure hope to see a c.e.p albino ones live i mean hehe

Greetz reinder

 

[paris]

yes-if they truly were albino they would have red eyes and no pigment.(although the human albinos i have met have had blue and purple eyes-so they had a little pigment-enough to mask the blood in the eyes) albanism though occurs in degrees -so if an animal has 3 colours then each colour can be knocked out and be albino independently.

so since they have black eyes and some baby body spots i would more likely call them leucistic-which is still not bad! how many parents are there for the group? theoretically if they operated by an X-Y system, or a Z-W and had only one set of parents then you would have 3 homozygous for the trait (the ones that show it would have 2 recessive genes) and the rest of the group would be heterozygous for the trait-so if you bred them back to each other their offspring would produce the pale ones.

popei are not easy to raise, so fatten them up now before they morph! i have some right now that seem to refuse food and are very shy-so hand feeding isnt an option.

on a side note-albinos are legally blind, so they cant get drivers licenses (although my friend mike could go 60 mph down hill on a mountian bike-and wreck it and need facial surgery) so its a little better they have pigment in the eyes -even if you keep them fully aquatic as adults (so they can hunt by smell) the morphs are very adept at drowning in even 1/2 inch of water with plants in it. so for a period of their lives they have to be on land and rely on the old peepers to obtain food.

 

[ralf]

Sorry Tim,
I agree with Reinder. I have seen this coloration in larvae quite often with my C.e.p. and the resulting adults just look the same as the others.

Ralf

 

[TJ]

Thanks a lot guys. Sure, just go ahead and shatter my dreams!

Reinder, I similarly had an odd-colored C.e.p variant earlier this year that eventually blended in with the rest, or perhaps became the most colorful of the lot after morphing (I didn't keep track of it).

Paris, that's some serious information to digest! Very interesting stuff. Well, if they're not albino, then I'd settle for leucistic!

I have two "pink" axoltls among my four -- one with black eyes and the other with red/pink eyes. So I assume then that the one with black eyes is...leucistic...right?

Here is a pic then (think I might've posted this one before in another thread) of a leucistic C.pyrrhogaster -- taken by Ryu Uchiyama and published in [A Photographic Guide: Amphibians and Reptiles in Japan]

So I guess what I'd like to know then is if there is any such thing as a true albino Cynops and if anybody has ever seen one. A pic of one would be nice too!

One of the newts appearing in the left-hand menu screen of this site appears to be an albino. Is that an albino Tiger sal or something else?

By the way, Paris, my C.e.p morphs must have 20-20 eyesight the way they come begging for bloodworm. Hope yours get used to being fed by hand too!

 

[aaron]

I'm just curious, why does everyone want to produce genetically inferior animals?

~Aaron

 

[TJ]

I guess for the same reason some people prefer hybrid tropical fish to drearier variety found in nature (take bettas, discus for example), bulldogs to wolves, blonds to brunettes even...?

Anyway, we're not talking malformed limbs or anything here, just color variants, which may be indeed be "genetically inferior" (loaded word!) if the newts in question are left to their own devices in nature (more easily spotted and eaten by hungry egrets!), but not necessarily so in the captive environment.

Take the many axoltl color variations, for example. The "mad scientist" in me may want to similarly mass produce albino Cynops for the herp community, but certainly not in order to repopulate the wild with them -- for which I'm cooking up a parallel grandiose scheme!

Anyway, when it comes to the desire (of at least some people) to manipulate nature to their own ends, one has to probe more deeply into the human psyche to figure that one out!

 

[paris]

yeah aaron, some people like things cause they are different. i saw an albino tadpole when i was a kid and became infatuated with the idea of an animal that has no skin colour (i always wanted to be one when i was a kid...but then i also wanted to be a pirate...so go fig..)

i have learned the technique for making 2 headed xenopus, and have to resist the temptation of applying it to some newt eggs....after all working in a lab i do have access to a centrifuge.

i think for alot of people its just novelty, after all you dont see as much interest in the other end of the colour abnormality-melenism-where the animal has full dark pigment. it is wrong however to expect these animals to be inferrior, its considered more of a handicap because they can be picked off more easily by preditors dont see as well, and light sensitivity.

there is a whole town in indiana that 'worships' their local population of albino tree squirrels-they even have them as their town logo, and running over one will cost you $$$.

once you start selectivly breeding with animals such as this-that is how you get your 'designer' animals. notice the one in the pic above-it is albino only in the brown pigment-the yellow and red are probably normal-giving it that painted look. if one next were to take it and isolate the yellow out, then breed selectivly for certian patterns-we might have 'candy cane' newts on the market. look at all the things that have been done with kingsnakes. it doesnt stop there however, we have for a while been able to separate out xx from xy sperm and can select the sex of children this way-next it will be hair/eye colour, once we start dinkiing about with people however alot of people protest.

 

[TJ]

Here are a couple of shots of an odd color variant (absence of pigmentation) on the belly of one of my C.p (this one from the northern prefecture of Niigata -- so either of the Tohoku (or Tohuko as its seems to have been dubbed in the West) race or of a transitional "race"

 

[rob]

It's ready for halloween!

Just the right colours!