Rare Albino Alligator, Snowflake, Pays Zoo In Illinois A Summer Visit

Jun 04, 2019 by apost team

Imagine an alligator that has an all-white skin and pinkish eyes, and you have the 16-year-old and seven-feet-long albino Snowflake. Albino alligators have parents with a recessive gene for albinism, so melanin cannot be created, which would normally color their skin and eyes. 

A white leucistic alligator is one of the rarest. There are only approximately 100 in the whole world and only 12 in the five million American alligator population. Leucistic means they have a tiny amount of pigmentation on their tail and around their mouth and their eyes are a piercing blue.

If you are in the vicinity of Illinois' Brookfield Zoo, you can see Snowflake in the zoo’s swamp habitat until September, when he will go back home to Florida's St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park. 

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The American alligator was listed as endangered in 1967. Collaboration between southern United States' agencies and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gave the population a chance to recover; and, in 1987, the alligator was removed from the Endangered Species List. 

You usually find alligators in swamps, marshes, lakes, and rivers, but the albinos have a difficult time surviving in the wild in their natural habitat. Predators can easily spot them with their bright white skin because they do not have natural camouflage. Also, with the direct sunlight burning their sensitive skin and their eyes, that makes it hard for them to see the predators. 

Florida's Gatorland theme park is excited to have brought these thrilling and amazing “modern-day dinosaurs” to their 110-acre park and wildlife preserve, which is known as “The Alligator Capital of the World”. Visit the giant white alligators at the White Gator Swamp. They can only take a small amount of sun, but their sensitive skin still needs to bask in some sun to regulate their body temperature.

They need to have a bit of Vitamin D and even that is supplemented in their diet of fish, red meat, chicken, and vitamins. They each have their own pool and a wooden deck where they can crawl out and bask in the heat.

Also, be sure to see the protected Baby Gator Marsh with 60 of the smallest alligators and this year’s hatchlings. Once the hatchlings are older than 18 months, they are moved into one of the outdoor pools in order to make room for the next hatchlings.

Collected from a swamp in Louisiana, 17 ivory reptile infants were recovered by Louisiana Land and Exploration Company workers while they were surveying in 1986. The hatchlings were brought to the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. However, only a few survived, and those few were brought to Gatorland.

Have you ever seen an albino alligator before? Would you go see it if you had the chance? Let us know in the comments and be sure to spread the word about this rare species!