Hello Jon,My name is Sarah Spellman and we spoke on Saturday at Uncon about a strange-looking squirrel photographed in Indiana. Here's the link to a picture of the squirrel:
http://rainbowmeow.com/2011/11/bizarre-patchwork-squirrel-sighted-in-greene-county-in/
That's the post on my blog, as I don't know how long the original source of the photo (a page on the website of the Greene County Daily World website) will remain available. Here's that original link, though:
http://gcdailyworld.com/story/1778978.html
I have emailed the Indiana Department of Natural Resources about the little guy, but haven't heard back yet. If you have any thoughts on this, it would be greatly appreciated! I know it's just a squirrel and not a chupacabras or a yeti, but having lived in Indiana much of my life without ever seeing one like this, I'd like to find out whether this colour variation has been documented before.
Thanks for taking the time to look at this,
Sarah
What would you call that, then? A calico squirrel? Be interesting to see if it has picked up cat genes somehow.
ReplyDeleteBest Wishes, Dale D.
Dale - apparently he/she is leucistic in a piebald manner (updated blog post here: http://rainbowmeow.com/2011/11/bizarre-patchwork-squirrel-sighted-in-greene-county-in/). So, nothing too mysterious, but still pretty cool. I'd be interested to know more about the genetics of this - I wonder why there's such a clear colour demarcation between the tail and the rest of the squirrel. Did the colours just 'land' so neatly by accident/chance, or is there a gene/gene combo that controls "front half of squirrel" and one that controls "back half of squirrel"?
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