The giraffe without spots does have a spot

Zebra, tiger, leopard, cheetah, giraffe – they all come with their own pattern. The characteristic dots, stripes or spots are unique, like a fingerprint, printed in their coat. But what if a zebra has dots instead of stripes, a cheetah has stripes rather than dots, or a giraffe is even completely even?

Recently, ‘the giraffe without spots’, born at Brights Zoo, a small zoo in Tennessee, has been in the news. According to experts, it is currently the only solid-colored giraffe in the world. The last known ‘spotless’ giraffe, Toshiko, lived in a zoo in Tokyo about fifty years ago.

Color mutations

“It’s funny that everyone is talking about the giraffe without spots again,” says Hein van Grouw, senior curator in the bird department of the British Natural History Museum in Tring, England and author of Black Blackbirds, White Blackbirds. He has been studying color mutations for almost thirty years, especially in birds, but he can also say something about mammals.

“It is said that this giraffe has no spots, but a giraffe is sand-colored with dark brown spots. This giraffe is completely dark brown, the color of the spots. So no, this is not a giraffe without spots, this is a giraffe with one spot. Otherwise he would have been sand-colored,” he says on the phone.

It is a form of melanism, he explains. “That is a common genetic mutation that occurs not only in giraffes, but in many animal species.” Melanism concerns the formation and distribution of the pigment melanin. How that mutation behaves varies per animal and per case.

Black Panther

Van Grouw mentions the black panther as an example. “It is a mutation that in a black panther, unlike a normal panther with spots, the pigment is evenly distributed over each hair.” Physically, an animal does not suffer from melanism, but it can make it more vulnerable in the wild. For example, it is difficult for a predator to pick one zebra from a herd of zebras, there’s safety in numbers when it comes to zebras. But if you stand as a spotted zebra among only striped zebras, you stand out. And so you are much easier prey.

There are also completely white animals, albinos, who do not produce any pigment, not even in their eyes – which affects their vision, making them even more vulnerable. It occurs in all animals, from lions and elephants to hedgehogs. Partial albinism does not exist, says Van Grouw: “When people see a raven that is partly white, they talk about partial albinism. But that doesn’t exist. You cannot be partially pregnant and you cannot be partially albino. If there is a little melanin present, an animal is not albino.”

At one point the story went that an albino coot was swimming in the canals of Amsterdam. But the black spots he had revealed that he may have less pigment, but he was not albino. It is more likely that this was a form of Progressive Greying, which is fairly common in the coot. For reasons often unknown, the animal then loses the pigment-forming cells, resulting in more unpigmented (white) feathers with each moult. These animals can turn white, but do not have the red eyes that animals with albinism have, and therefore have a higher chance of survival.

In addition to melanin, birds have another pigment, carotene, which can provide birds with a special appearance. Such as the yellow penguin that was spotted in 2021. “There was such a fuss about it at the time,” says Van Grouw. “While it is not crazy. The penguin naturally has visible yellow on its head and chest, but this pigment is also invisible under the penguin’s black, its predominant color. If the black disappears due to albinism, you are left with the yellow color that the bird has because of the carotene.”

Brights Zoo organized an online election to name the one-spotted giraffe. Kipekee won with 36 percent – that is unique in Swahili.