Color codes
Animals of unusual colors hit the headlines in February. Fortunately, it was no red alert and there’s nothing to be alarmed about.
The pack of blue dogs seen roaming in Russia’s industrial city of Dzerzhinsk last 11 February became online sensations until veterinarians deciphered what happened. One speculation was that the toxic copper sulphate chemical caused the dogs’ fur to change color.
Results of fecalysis and blood tests done on the animals by vets indicated otherwise. The dogs were actually healthy.
However, traces of Prussian blue dye were found in their fur. Apparently, the dogs rolled around in powdered blue dye at a plant that produces acrylic glass and prussic acid.
On 18 February, several dogs with bright green fur were seen roaming around the industrial town of Podolsk south of Moscow. It was learned that local pranksters just tried to capitalized on the popularity of the blue-furred dogs. Tests done by vets showed the animals were healthy.
Last Saturday, a yellow crocodile in Rodriguez, Rizal was reported. Noel Rafael, curator and conservation program director of the town’s Avilon Zoo, called the rare reptile a high yellow Indo-Pacific saltwater crocodile.
Rafael explained that the croc’s color was due to the overexpression of yellow pigment on its skin. The condition is the opposite of leucism, or the partial loss of pigmentation on an animal’s skin that affected a rare yellow penguin that Belgian wildlife photographer Yves Adams caught on his camera at a king penguin colony in South Georgia, an island in the southern Atlantic, in December 2019.
Of course, the yellow crocodile is not affiliated with the opposition, though it remains a symbol of greedy bureaucrats of the kotong kind. Filipinos can only dream that the pesky human caricature is as rare as the yellow croc, which researcher Dr. Adam Britton claimed to be one in a hundred million, like the yellow-headed one he saw in Australia’s Adelaide River in 2014.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing apocalyptic about the red water in Ozamiz City’s coast since last weekend. The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources attributed the bloody color to the large concentrations of aquatic microorganisms such as protozoans and unicellular algae in the water. That so-called red tide means it is dangerous to eat shellfish coming from the reddish water because these are highly toxic. Eating red tide-laced mussels, oysters or clams can lead to deadly paralytic shellfish poisoning.