In July, a yellow turtle was spotted in Odisha's Balasore district and was rescued before it was handed over to the forest department. For the second time, the Indian Forest Service has announced the discovery of another golden flapshell turtle in West Bengal, India, on Tuesday, November 3.
Debashish Sharma, an officer at Indian Forest Service, shared photos on his Twitter account of the discovery of the turtle with its bright yellow shell. Since then, it has made its rounds on the internet for its unique color.
Some people would say its color looks like a slice of cheese or a slab of butter or the yolk of an egg. The golden flapshell turtle has a vivid yellow color on its shell, head, and limbs that look good enough to eat.
Today a Yellow Turtle was rescued from a Pond in Burdwan,WB. It's one kind of a rarely occuring Flapshell Turtle. @ParveenKaswan @SanthoshaGubbi @RandeepHooda @rameshpandeyifs pic.twitter.com/enTyNAkxmP — Debashish Sharma, IFS (@deva_iitkgp) October 27, 2020
Yellow Variants of Indian Flapshell Turtles
Indian flapshell turtles (Lissemys punctata) are usually brown with yellow spots and a white underside. The yellow variants of this species have often been discovered a handful of times over the years in different parts of South Asia where it commonly lives.
Aberrations in color among animals do not typically happen, but it usually stands out when it does. For instance, there was a turtle found in Gujarat on the west coast of India in 1997 that has a yellow body and pink eyes, and other turtles with the same characteristics were found in Myanmar and Bangladesh, although there was no official data that was published.
Last July, a golden flapshell turtle was rescued in Odisha and was handed over to the forest department. But three months later, a new turtle was discovered, but this time it is in West Bengal, India.
Wildlife biologist Sneha Dharwadkar said that the rare yellow flapshell turtle must be a case of a lack of pigment called tyrosine that is present in reptiles. She added that a genetic mutational might have been responsible for the lack of tyrosine, Cnet reported.
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Similar Case as Albinism
According to a report by Science Alert, the yellow flapshell turtle's case is similar to piealbinism, which is a genetic disorder that causes the lack of all pigments I'm the body. But in the turtle's case, yellow pteridine pigments became the dominant color along with the eye pigment.
This phenomenon is called chromatic leucism, and researchers said that it could provide the most dazzling colors. Also, researchers call it a relatively common phenomenon because of the number of events that people were able to discover yellow turtles, especially in South Asia.
Although it may look fascinating to many, just like the albino shark and other albino animals, the lack of pigment could be a burden. It would be harder for them to camouflage, which would attract more predators. That is why they are often rescued and transferred to captivity.
