Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Leucistic critters
Guess I’m not un-blocked yet, because I allowed the evil Lyn Cash to distract me with her wonderful links — primarily the Brokeback Mountain Happy Meal video, through which I discovered the LA sketch comedy group Fries on the Side.
I’ve filed them under “food.” Had to watch every one of their videos. Had to. My favorites: Default Date, Walken & Walken, and She’s Special.
Then I got sidetracked onto banned commercials at Google Video, like this Mastercard commercial. Damn it. Another 90 minutes down the tube, watching every funny commercial video I could find. Here’s another one, double damn it.
Back to Lyn. Top o’ the blog at the moment is a photo of a leucistic peacock. For those of you not into critters, leucistic animals are starkly white, unlike albino animals, which often retain some pigment. Leucistics have pigmented eyes, while albinos have pink eyes due to a lack of pigment.
Follow the links for examples of a leucistic ball python, albino ball python, and a normal ball python. Just to mix things up, here’s a piebald ball python, part leucistic, part wildtype pigmentation.
I couldn’t find much detail on the biology of leucism — just this brief Wikipedia article. The biology of albinism is well understood, however.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see how many different leucistic animal pictures I could find on the web. Here are some good ones:
I have no excuse for not working on my book today, none at all. I need a good kick in the ass, that’s what I need.
D.
consider this a BIG KICK…
back to reading.
I’m in the mood to kick someone’s ass, I have a ton of frequent flier miles left to use up, and I know where you live. Get back to work!
I am working, I am! Yesterday I was in the doldrums. Today, not bad. I’m shooting for 2000 words.
Sheila, Kate, anytime you want to come out here, be my guest. I’ll cook for you, and your families too 😉
Heh heh. I got no room to talk when it comes to ass-kicking. I wrote a short story last month, but my novel is collecting some serious dust.
And I even know what the next few scenes are, I just keep finding excuses not to get started on it [hee hee, their names are Steve, Shaya, Matthew, Michaela, and Sydney… I could probably include the fish, but they don’t have names.] Pitiful, ain’t it?
No, Shelbi, it’s all too familiar.
applause how damn kewl – THANKS for posting these. The gator and the turtle were especially interesting to me, but I also enjoyed the various snakes. Had no idea there were such creatures. I just saw the peacock and went ‘wow’. THANKS AGAIN.
Hey Sunny 😉 glad someone liked the photos — all those others were only interested in kicking my ass!
[…] Son of Godawful? Mostly. By Walnut Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. The villain of The Da Vinci Code is NOT albino, dammit. He’s leucistic. Look at his eyes — they’re blue, not pink. Trust me on this. So you albino rights groups can chill out right now. […]