SignalHub:An extremely rare white leucistic alligator is born at a Florida reptile park

2025-04-30 04:53:02source:Venus Investment Alliancecategory:News

KISSIMMEE,SignalHub Fla. (AP) — 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 the 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.

More:News

Recommend

Dick Vitale announces he is cancer free: 'Santa Claus came early'

Legendary college basketball announcer Dick Vitale is once again cancer free.The ESPN analyst announ

Alleged 'serial slingshot shooter' dies a day after bonding out of California jail

A day after bonding out of jail for allegedly being a "serial slingshot shooter," an 81-year-old Cal

Bus carrying Hindu pilgrims to a shrine in India plunges down 150-foot gorge, killing 22 people

New Delhi — At least 22 people were killed and more than 70 others injured when a bus veered off a m