Nature Bulletin No. 442-A   January 29, 1972
Forest Preserve District of Cook County 
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:ALBINOS

Albinos have always been objects of superstition and wonder because 
of their spectacular appearance and rarity in nature. To the Indian tribes 
of the Great Plains, a white buffalo was a sacred beast regarded as the 
special property of the Sun. When one was found and killed the hide 
was always beautifully tanned, made into a robe and, at the next annual 
religious ceremony, hung above all other offerings to the Sun. It was 
never used or sold but allowed to hang until it shriveled and fell to 
pieces. Only the medicine men were permitted to use the scraps, 
trimmed from the edges, for wrapping their sacred pipes or to make a 
head band worn on great occasions.

"Albino" is the name originally given by Portuguese explorers to 
"white" Negroes they saw in West Africa. Since then it also has come to 
mean an individual, of any species of living thing, which lacks the 
pigments that other members of its race normally have. Albinos occur 
among all races of men, almost all species of domestic animals, and a 
wide variety of wild species. We also see, sometimes, the opposite: an 
intense pigmentation called "melanism", such as in black squirrels, 
black pheasants and other species with black or nearly black plumage, 
pelt or skin.

True Albinos, such as in man, show an almost total lack of pigment in 
their skin, hair and eyes. The eyes, however, appear pink or red because 
the blood vessels in the iris and retina reflect light, whereas in normally 
colored individuals they are hidden by pigment. Albino people have 
very defective vision and their eyes are extremely sensitive to light. 
They habitually squint, blink, and should wear dark glasses. The skin is 
very white and never tans, so that sunburn is much more serious than in 
ordinary blondes.

Among humans and wild animals, most albinos come from parents with 
normal coloring. Studies of the pedigrees of hundreds of families with 
one or more albino children indicate that the peculiarity is inherited 
from both the father and the mother -- both carry the albino gene or 
hereditary factor without any indication of it before the child is born -- 
and that, on the average, one fourth of the children of such parents are 
albinos.

White mice, white rats, white guinea pigs and white rabbits -- true 
albinos with pink eyes -- are reared on a large scale for pets or for use 
in scientific laboratories, and for crossing with variously colored races 
in breeding experiments. In general, these animals are preferred because 
they thrive in captivity and are tamer than their wild and colored 
relatives.

For years, the city park of Olney, Illinois, has had a famous colony of 
white squirrels. Crowds of people used to strain their eyes for a glimpse 
of an albino bat among the hordes that stream out of Carlsbad Cavern, 
in New Mexico, every evening at dusk. Several years ago, in our Deer 
Grove forest preserve, there was a white crow but the rest of the flock 
drove it away and the poor outcast disappeared. In nature, most albinos 
probably fall easy prey to their enemies because they are so 
conspicuous and their eyesight is poor.

Magazines and newspapers frequently print reports, often with 
photographs, of white deer, porcupines, possums, raccoons, muskrats, 
minks, robins, crows, blackbirds and other animals. In addition, the 
Shedd Aquarium and the Brookfield Zoo report that they have exhibited 
or have seen albinos of the following: brook trout, dogfish, gar, 
crayfish, lobster, garter snake, rattlesnake, frog and chipmunk.

Was Moby Dick an albino ?