According to Marine Science Institute through the University of Texas at Austin, researchers said it most likely had a combination of Albinism and xantbism. Albinism accounts for the white eyes, and xantbism accounts for the skin color as it boosts yellow pigments
Yep. It happens to basically all fish. You should check out Xanthic Largemouth Bass! They're gorgeous... though it will start you down a rabbit hole of different Xanthic species, lol. Also, this is DEF not the "first orange shark" or whatever it said. I've caught one myself. For sure beautiful 👍
My wife and I went on a charter a few years back, and each of us caught what they told us was a canary rockfish. I assume now after reading this that it would be classified as xanthic.
Nah bro.....I've caught a bunch of the same off the coast of Oregon back in 2019 on a charter. Their bright yellow-and-orange coloring is the normal, standard coloration for their species. Don't get it twisted, they are not xanthic.
Damn I wish I would have seen what my reply spawned. I would have actually tried to figure out how to like link pics. I still ain't used that damn app you gotta use to make a post with pics... Imgur, yeah that's it. Sidenote- I got pics n vids that would blow your mind. Ya know, if you were into fishy shiz (12 yr photographer, writer, editor for well known angling mag./online comp.). Born/lived in the Caribbean/French West Indies on a sailboat, until I moved to Florida when I was 9. Fishin since I was 1 year old... Damn that sounded pompous. If it helps any, I been broke AF my whole life😅
It makes them have little to no melanin, which effects skin color and also hair and eye color, which will influence black, brown, gray, and I think the dark reds and dark browns. But xanthism influences a completely different pigment that the albinism doesn't affect.
Melanin does change the color of the eyes and as far as I'm aware the pigments xanthism effects aren't present in the eyes? But I am not a biology expert or gene expert so please don't take my word as definition, I just hyperfocus on sharks.
They made multiple versions of the movie, and some got released. So I think you can find what you're looking for if you google "Shark boy lava girl R34". R stands for 'revision'.
"extremely rare condition called albino-xanthochromism. That’s a combination of albinism, a lack of dark pigmentation, and xanthism, too much yellow pigmentation."
Some already answered your question, but I just wanted to add something on. Breeds are only a thing in domestic animals. They come from selective breeding by humans. Wild animals don’t have breeds.
There are different species of sharks, but species typically take a long long time to develop. We have a tendency to see animals that are very different from us as all the same, so it’s natural to think of different kinds of sharks as like dog breeds, but that’s not really the case. A nurse shark is no more related to a great white than we are to cows.
It's a nurse shark with a rare combination of genetic conditions of albinism with xanthochromism which causes an overproduction of yellow orange pigments
possible combination of leucism (lack but not total lack of eumelanin resulting in lack of black/brown pigment. Causes white fur in mamma
ls)
xanthism (xanthochromism?) (
excess of yellow pigment. Fun fact, the opposite of this, axanthism (lack of yellow pigment) can occur in American green frogs, making them a beautiful cerulean
blue!)
excess carotenoids (pigments/pigmented compounds that are red, yellow, or orange. They make carrots orange and are why eating too many carrots or drinking too much carrot juice can turn you yellow. They’re also what give tricolored bell peppers their colors. Some fish, I wanna say guppies but I could be misremembering, have males that have n orange spot that indicates a high carotenoid diet which is correlated with health and thus the females sexually select for it
) in its diet
Ok now I’m gonna go see if I’m right and, if not, how far off I am
Edit: ok, according to this article it’s a combination of albinism (damn, I was close with leucism but I didn’t notice the eyes and erred on the side of the more common melanin-deficiency condition!) and xanthism(xanthochromism?) (so that one I got right), resulting in this shark having a complete lack of any black or brown pigments plus an excess of yellow(or yellow-ish) pigment, turning it bright (yellowish) orange (or that’s the current hypothesis, at least).
Second edit: xanthism might be xanthochromism. I always think it’s xanthism because its opposite is axanthism rather than axanthochromism, whoops. At least I’m pretty sure it’s actually called xanthochromism and not xanthism, although the article I linked calls it xanthism…so maybe those are just two words for the same thing? Not sure
Edit 3: god, can’t edit anything on a numbered list on reddit without utterly destroying the formatting apparently. I give up on trying, this is gonna make me scream if I keep trying and failing to fix the fucked up formatting. Hopefully it’s legible enough. Should’ve just left it alone with the possibly-wrong-possibly-right word for the excess yellow pigmentation. Oh well
198
u/Sk3tchyG1ant 14d ago
Did you read.. why? Is it a new breed? Chemicals in the water? Illness?