An extremely rare white leucistic alligator has been born at a Florida reptile park.
The 19.2-inch (49 cm) female slithered out of its shell and into the history books as one of only seven known leucistic alligators, Gatorland Orlando said Thursday. Three of the seven are at the park, officials there said.
“This is beyond rare. It is absolutely extraordinary,” Mark McHugh, president and CEO of Gatorland, said in a statement.
The park is asking for the public's help in naming the alligator, which is descended from a nest of leucistic alligators discovered in the swamps of Louisiana in 1987. The blue-eyed newborn is the first solid white alligator ever recorded to have descended from those original alligators, McHugh said.
Leucistic alligators are the rarest genetic variation in the American alligator. They differ from albino alligators, which have pink eyes and a complete loss of pigment, according to Gatorland.
Park visitors will be able to see the leucistic alligator and her normal-colored brother early next year.
“For now, however, we continue to keep them safe where we can closely monitor their health and growth,” McHugh said.
Irrigation might have saved Jackson's hay, but she and her husband rejected the idea about 10 years ago over the cost: as much as $75,000 for a new well and all the equipment. But now — with an extended drought and another U.S. heat wave this week that will broil her land about an hour northwest of Dallas for days in 100-degree-plus temperatures — Jackson said she is “kind of rethinking.”
India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole on Wednesday — a historic voyage to uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water, and a technological triumph for the world’s most populous nation.
The head of Russia's space agency said Monday that the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after its engines failed to shut down correctly, and he blamed the country's decades-long pause in lunar exploration for the mishap.
