I'm studying biology in college, the basic courses now, more advanced stuff later (biology will be my major after I complete my science transfer degree.)

I'm collecting photos of unusual animals, mainly ones that have "discoloration." If you have such a photo, I'd appreciate you sending it to me or posting it here. Let me know if I can use it on the internet, because I might make a webpage eventually about it, and/or update the Wiki online encyclopedia.
*I will not sell your photos. I will give you credit with your name if you wish.

What I am especially interested in:

Melanistic animals:
Melanism is basically the opposite of albinism, it's extra melanin pigment in the skin, making an animal look black or chocolate brown when they normally wouldn't be. For example, the "black panther" is a melanistic jaguar. It's a genetic condition.
(I now have a 'coon example, thank you Wiley. ) notworthy

Albino animals:
Albinism is a lack of melanin (a type of pigment) in skin AND eyes, which results in either a white appearance or pink; the pink coming from the blood vessels beneath the skin. (This is why albinos have pink eyes.)
Albinism does not occur in every animal species, for example, there are no known albino tigers, nor are there any historical reports of them. White tigers are not albinos, as the have blue eyes and black stripes. They suffer from a different genetic disorder...

(Albino coyotes seem to be extremely rare, I'd faint it I were lucky enough to come across a photo!)

Leucistic animals: (pronounced Loo-kism, Loo-kis-tik)
This is similar to albinism. The difference is, it can be a lack of any type of pigment in skin/hair/feathers, not just melanin. So it can result in a pure-white animal, or just make an animal have white patches. If you have ever seen a crow with some white feathers, that's leucism.

Off-color animals:
I'm especially interested in coyotes. Black ones, white ones, chocolate ones, red ones, blond ones...any sort of unusual coloring or pattern I want. Foxes with half of their tail a different color, black/blond beavers, animals with eyes of different colors (one brown and one blue eye etc)...

So, if you have any unusual animal pics, show and tell!

My brother caught this coon last season.

Here's a Black Coyote my daughter Katye caught last year....
Before

After

gator that martin is SWEEET!

[IMG]http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff162/troyerickson/blackcoyote-1.jpg[/IMG]

Nice very nice, keep them coming. I hope to put my collection of them on a website one day, and attempt to explain all of them. I believe that's a leucistic coon, and a melanistic coon (and yote,) but that marten is pretty mysterious.

If you can in the future, try to take pictures close up of the face also, as eye color can be important in determining what's going on. And I hope you guys get these mounted.

Caught an albino possum, but do not have a digital camera. Wife said I could hve it mounted fro father's day, but who the heck wants one of those ugly beasts in thier house, alive or dead.

Here is a piebald doe that I used to see all the time. In three years, she had three sets of twins with 4 of the 6 fawns being piebald as well.

Tim

yea, im just south of MORDOR!!!!!!

that is a cool looking marten!

charles....man, that thing is ugly!

here's an ugly beaver i caught...

here's a coyote jtrapper caught



and a light color yote i caught

here's Blackdog's black coyote!

Here is a bobcat with white socks from last year, a friend of mine caught it.

Corey

oh corey!

i bet that belly was WIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE and CLEAAAAAAAAAAAR! eh?

cute kitty!!

Here's a beaver with a white "collar" around the neck I caught a few yrs ago.

[url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=451069&c=542&z=1"][/url]


Another guy caught this marten who traps near me.
[url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=459801&c=542&z=1"][/url]

Charles....it had a nice nice belly. I need to thaw it out and get it skinned. Our local C.O. caught it last winter in a bucket. Real odd, i've had my hands on a bunch of dead cats, but never seen one with the white socks like this one had.

i hear ya corey. i got one similair a couple years ago, really white feet, NOT socks, but by far the best belly i ever got on a cat.

here is a marten for ya... also check out the kermode bears..white blackbears..



glacier bear

I got 25 Black Richardsons ground squirrels frozen whole in my deepfreeze. And don,t tell me that they are common! Melanistic variation . Whithout the watermelon!

that white bear shweet lookin

Here is a red yote I nabbed last year, her underfur was as red as a red headed step childs with silver gaurd hair....There is one more that I know of in the area I trap also a couple black ones were spotted running together in the last week or two.

Sean

Can you say RED WOLF ????????????????????????????

Noone can tell for certain not even the biologist but it has a very close resemblence to them. They are breeding with the coyotes so much that we have all kinds of colors around here.

[quote=CharlesKS]you said unusual......

aintgotta (pronounced aint gott hair on me"



It's a warg!

No seriously, it's a poor yote with mange. There's 2 types of mange, and he's definitely got one of them. By the time it's this advanced there's no way to save a creature, be it a dog or yote or squirrel, fox etc...We trappers have a responsibility to kill any animal like this, it's highly contagious. Any furry mammal that sleeps in this infected yote's burrow, within 48 hours of him being there, will get it also. The mange mites cause a thickening of the skin, incessant itching, and eventually the loss of almost all hair from the body. We really help the environment by removing these guys.

Some people took a picture of a squirrel with mange near Seattle and laughed at it on a blog, it's quite inappropriate, it's like laughing at an animal with rabies IMO.

Fascinating. Yeah i'm into the Red Wolf, nobody is even sure about what a red wolf is. Is it it's own species, or a grey wolf/coyote hybrid? The ones in captivity in the breeding program have been DNA tested suggesting wolf/coyote hybrid, but maybe when the species dwindled to low numbers they tried to save themselves form extinction by breeding with the most similar species at hand: coyotes. Yotes, wolves, dogs, dingos and jackals can all breed with each other, making biologists have to re-consider what exactly defines a species. The debate rages on.

ive seen one of those "red wolfs", much like the "black coyotes" i have a problem shooting things i dont know for a fact is a target species, from a few hundred yarsd away through a scope on a misty morning, all things black, or red, more so than an average coyote keep walkin, just cant bring myself to shoot them for fear its a pet, im also pretty sure ive been present when wolves were killed, i was pretty little, it was my first deer season, anyway later on i read about "brush wolves" supposed to be the dna of a coyote, but bigger than average, and look very musch like a wolf, probly the guys from wisconson know more about them, i think its more common up there than it is around here

give me a day or 2 to bait in the good ones, i have both black, and blonde squirrels, have some half red/blonde ones, i know they are in the neighbor hood, just gotta get them in close for good pics

charles what is that?

a buetiful well furred kansas coyote.

awesome.

would you believe me, if i told you, that EVERY coyote i have ever caught on that location, was mange?

but the cats, the cats is why i set it, its a HOT spot for them.

andy will have it this year..MUHAHAHHA

id like to see him get a nice kansas pale!

I'd throw the whole trap away.

A black beaver I caught in a snare set for cats

Dang Charles it looks like your coyotes are just as good looking as ours!

Here's a woodchuck (groundhog). Just a juvie. Along side a normal one for comparison.

Hmm I've never seen a woodchuck before. They don't have alot of hair on their bellies, do they?

"Hmm I've never seen a woodchuck before. They don't have alot of hair on their bellies, do they?"

No, I guess not. Since you've never seen one, it's the brown one that is normal. ;o) The black one is the only one I've seen in that color.

il trapper that is a sweet pic of the yote in your signature!!!!

sweet pic Tom LR!!!

Oh, doodle, you forgot to mention that the shooter of this turkey thought it was white because it was "old".

This doe is 3 1/2 years old this year, still alive


Coyote I caught last January


Groundhog I shot about 15 years ago.


Buck from 2003


Coyote a friend shot last September.

well sullivan doesnt look like rosy has the mange

Down here in New Zealand I trap a few Australian Brushtailed Opossums (introduced to our country and now regarded as a pest). They might typically look like this:



or this:



Sometimes I see a few whiter strands of fur, occasionally I've seen a short portion of the end of the tail that is fairly white. The possum pictured below had more white on it than I've ever seen. Sorry, didn't take a pic showing the face and eyes, but I don't recall anything different about it:



Best wishes with your work.... Stephen Coote.

How much do you get for those possums they look pretty sweet.

Good quality pelts and plucked fur can be sold from these animals. Most pelts aren't good ones, but a top grade one may fetch NZ$12 or $14. Currently we are being offered NZ$105 per kilogram for the plucked fur. The fur has to be longer than 20 mm so generally the leg and belly fur isn't wanted...neither is the coarse stuff from the tail. It takes the fur from maybe 16 animals to provide a kilogram.

The brushtailed opossum fur is hollow, and it is blended with merino wool to make high quality garments.

With the animals having 'pest' status here, it can be 'green' to wear brushtailed possum furs or fiber garments.

Those are pretty sweet possums. Way cooler than our ugly, moronic, idiotic looking things we've got here.

If our possums had furred tails, and faces that didn't scare children, I might like them. Yours loo more like a cross between a cat and a skunk, imho.

I always wondered about international trapping. I always kinda thought we were the only ones (in the US) that still trapped anything. Naive, a little?

Coote pm sent. I use alot of this fur tying trout flies. really soft and easy to work with.

Shameless bump!

gorgeous porkie! He looks huge! What is the wire spacing on that fence?

well yes smarty pants it was in there or are you going senile. i dont know you but ya know what you seem rude!! here inwv we dont have white turkeys fool,now if you have never seen one what in the heck would you think?????

heres my very first coyote a very big male i have lots more pix but not on this computer

few more woodchucks from a single days hunt....






Scottie

Obese beaver,LOL. Over 90 pounds

Heres a red yote from Monday.

Where is the picture of Tsarvena?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Where is the picture of Tsarvena?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????


Are you sure that picture of the "hairless rodent" isn't a Mountain Beaver, not a squirrel? Where is the long tail? Look up the Mountain Beaver on the web and compare it! LT

Here's me and my weight trainer, I'm on the South Beach Mackarel diet.


I thought the mangy rodent was a squirrel with his tail tucked-under, because of where they said the photo was taken. It was supposed to be inside or near Seattle. The boomers (mt. beaver) are usually found in higher altitude. You could be right tho, maybe the photo was mis-captioned.

Albino Porcupine

Bumping the thread again! I see people posting new pictures of unusual animals, but I don't think they ever saw this thread. Keep them coming!

do mountain beavers sposed to have fur?

They aren't photographed often, usually being shy creatures. From what I've read, they could fit inside the space the size of a basket ball.

Killed this black female yote Sat. while deer hunting.

do they have a tail like a beaver?

Ooh she's pretty. Love the "normal" yote next to her, provides good comparison. It seems the white chest patch is pretty common with these. Gonna mount her?

No it's not leathery, it's like a stubby rabbit's tail.



These guys have no relation to beaver. They are rodents, but the most primitive of all rodents alive today. A living fossil. They don't have a fur value (Indians used to make robes out of them, and showed them off to Lewis and Clark) but today they are just considered garden pests. Timber industry hates them because they eat the newly planted seedlings.

Supposedly they are worth their weight in a precious metal to taxidermists, who would sell them to natural history museums.

Not gonna mount her, but I am gonna have her tanned. The past month has been good to me, caught a red yote, shot black yote, and shot a "regular" yote.

cool lookin critters

coyote from last year

Kenny Pete walking his dog "spot"

Magoo's Three boys...

real funny fluffy.lol

lmao@magoo !! lynx i think i have seen one of those while duck huntin !!

a red coyote from the other day.

This really isn't an unusual animal but it is an animal at an unique time in it's life. It's about half way back to being a weasel from being an ermine so I call it a "weasmine".

Here's an odd one..... caught a white mole last summer. I've talked with guys who have caught 2000 moles per year for 10 years and have never seen one. I should have had it mounted, but I'm not into that aspect of critters. Catch a thousand or so animals a year, so never could see what the big deal is about having one in the house.

Man that mole is a one in a million! I hope you get more, and preserve them, perhaps the genes are still floatin around in your area.

That weasmine and blond coyote are nice too...Is it just me or does the weasel have an especially long tail?

tundra griz, If I would of just saw that third pic I would be one of the guys claiming I saw a mountain lion. lol. It looks so big and muscular in that photo.

Wow! Do you remember what the eye color was for that blond coon Beef?