When ranger, Jess Boon arrived back from morning game drive one day last week talking about a ‘blue-eyed’ elephant calf we all thought that she possibly needed to go on leave after her six week cycle as we could only assume that she was seeing things. So with no hesitation, she got her camera out to show us and true to her word, she had pictures of a half pink, half grey, blue-eyed elephant.
This truly intrigued me, as it did the entire Londolozi ranging team, so I decided to do some research. This was a much greater task than I originally thought, as there have been no more than a handful of these elephants recorded with this same ‘skin defect’. It is believed that these calfs are partially albino. Various gene mutations that affect the production of normal pigmentation is called Albinism. Albinos that are fully white and have characteristic pink eyes due to the lack of melanin and are reffered to as true or amelanistic albinos. Albinos that are partial, also refered to as blue-eyed albinos, only have some residual pigmentation. There are various degrees of patchy albinism (piebaldism) due to localised mutations in skin cells.
In this instance as well that the other recorded intances where this has happened, they calfs are treated normally by their mothers and the rest of the herd. I am hoping that this will ensure that the calf makes it to adulthood, although, there have not been any records of adult elephants with this partial albinism. It is not known whether these calfs grow out of it or whether they dont survive to adulthood due to the sensitivity of their eyes and skin to the sun.
If anyone has any other ideas about what the cause of this might be, please let me know!
Photographed by Jess Boon and written by Kate Neill
Rich Laburn is filmmaker, photographer and writer who is based at Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa. Spending his time capturing scenes of the wild and communicating the beauty of the African bushveld, he runs the Londolozi Blog as a way to entertain and engage people wishing to visit these wild lands.
