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THE STATE (Columbia, S Carolina) 04 October 06 Zoo's rare white alligator dies (Joey Holleman)
The rare white alligator at Riverbanks Zoo has died of an intestinal infection, zoo officials announced Tuesday.
The 3-year-old gator likely wouldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks in the wild, where its white skin color would have been a beacon to predators. The gator was leucistic, not albino. Leucistic creatures have white skin pigment but otherwise normal coloring, while albinos have no pigment and pink eyes.
There are fewer than a dozen leucistic gators in captivity at U.S. institutions, according to zoo officials.
Three leucistic gator siblings were brought to Riverbanks by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources in 2003 after being seized from three Lowcountry men, who had taken the recently hatched creatures from a lagoon in Hilton Head. Taking gators from the wild without a permit is illegal.
One gator arrived at the zoo in poor shape and died within 48 hours, said Riverbanks veterinarian Keith Benson. A second gator died a few days later from an intestinal infection. The third sibling, suspected of having a similar problem, was treated with antibiotics and recovered, Benson said.
Riverbanks kept the gator out of public view until June, when it went on display with several normally colored young gators in the Aquarium Reptile Complex. From the start, the white gator hadn’t thrived like the normal gators. That became more evident when the younger normal gators in the exhibit quickly passed the white gator in size.
Zoo officials suspected the white gator had intestinal problems again and treated it with antibiotics in recent weeks, but the gator’s condition continued to deteriorate. A necropsy performed by Riverbanks revealed infections in the intestines, but the actual cause of death won’t be certain until lab results are returned in a few weeks, Benson said.
Zoo's rare white alligator dies
