A rare yellow-coloured turtle was rescued by the villagers of Sujanpur in Balasore district of Odisha on July 19. It was handed over to the forest department officials who were equally surprised to see the reptile. The turtle’s video and photo were soon trending on the web.
B Acharya, Wildlife Warden says, “This is a rare turtle, I have never seen one like this.”
Indian forest service officer Sushanta Nanda who also shared a video of the turtle on Twitter says that it could be an albino turtle. He added that a similar turtle was recorded in Sindh a few years back. The fact that it is an albino could be further confirmed looking at the eyes which were pink coloured.
Some Twitter users also claimed that it could be an albino Indian flapshell turtle.
According to The Tribune, which reported the sighting of a similar yellow coloured turtle in Sindh, Pakistan in 2016, the turtle was an albino Indian flapshell turtle (Lissemys punctuate). The turtle is commonly found in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal and Sri Lanka and is protected under appendix II of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and Flora.
Conservator wildlife Saeed Akhtar Balouch of Pakistan had noted at the time that the turtle was yellow because of the complete or partial absence of pigment-I in the skin, hair and eyes due to absence or defect of tyrosine, a copper-containing enzyme involved in the production of melanin.
According to experts, albino turtles are quite rare in nature with one in many hundreds of thousands. Even then, they are never purely white and may have an off-white colouration. A rare albino turtle hatchling which was white in colour had been spotted in Australia’s Castaway’s beach in 2016.
Turtle breeders though claim to have bred yellow turtles for sale as pets, though it is illegal to keep them as pets in many countries.
Also Read: What causes a sea turtle to be a female or a male?
