© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Indian Forest Service Officer Parveen Kaswan has shared a photograph featuring an albino spotted deer on Twitter. The albino fawn was sighted Monday morning in Uttar Pradesh’s Katarniya Ghat Wildlife Sanctuary. The photograph of the rarely spotted deer is doing the rounds on the internet.
Along with an adult deer, the albino fawn is seen moving through the field in the wildlife sanctuary in the photo. IFS officer Akash Deep Badhawan tweeted while posting the photograph, “Staying true to its tagline, “Katarniaghat – Where rare is common”, an albino spotted deer fawn was sighted this morning. PC – Pulkit Gupta, Gharial Conservation Team.”
Kaswan noted about the albino deer’s difficulty to adapt. “In nature exceptions are removed first. They are hard to adapt,” read his tweet. IFS officer Susanta Nanda reminisced about one such deer spotted in Odisha’s Angul district 15 years ago. “Golden deer was part of Ramayana. Here is a silver deer shared by @aakashbadhawan. Had seen one at Labangi guest house of Angul District 15 years earlier,” Nanda wrote.
While some users were amazed by its sighting, several others were concerned about the threat it would face from predators. A user commented, “Except in case that… these exceptions are on top of the food chain…” Another user wrote, “Very rare.” A third user wrote, “Awesome.”
Albino animals have partial or complete loss of pigmentation and usually they inherit mutated genes from both parents that impacts production of melanin. The melanin pigment determines the colour of skin, fur and eyes. The albino animals fall easy prey of predators and find difficulty in mating. They find it difficult to survive due to lack of camouflage ability, Nat Geo report said.
The Katarniya Ghat Wildlife Sanctuary in Bahraich district is home to several endangered species, including gharial, tiger, rhino, Gangetic dolphin, swamp deer, Hispid hare, Bengal florican, the White-backed and Long-billed vultures, as per the sanctuary’s website.
