• Question: is there any reports of two albino animals creating a normal-colour-pigmented animal? :)

    Asked by 435ecyf46 to Hannah, Joanna, Joe, Luis, Vincent on 16 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Hannah Grist

      Hannah Grist answered on 16 Jun 2016:


      Wow, that was a great question! Really made me think :-).

      I have never heard of such a thing existing, and I think it probably couldn’t, because of how albinos come about.

      Normally, an animal is albino because it doesn’t produce the chemical that makes hair and skin look darker, called melanin. Everything has two copies of the gene for producing melanin, but sometimes the gene gets broken. it’s ok for most animals because one of the genes still works, but for albinos, both copies of the gene are broken. So if two albino animals had a baby, they could only pass down broken copies of the gene, because they don’t have a non-broken one between them!

    • Photo: Joe Nunez-Mino

      Joe Nunez-Mino answered on 21 Jun 2016:


      I think Hannah has got it just right but would need to check if this applies to all animals. I’m going to guess (without being 100% sure) that it does

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