The sight of bottlenose dolphins swimming in Australian waters is anything but ordinary. Researchers say the marine mammal is coated in a rare color seen in only a handful of other dolphins photographed, hence the unique name “speckled.”
Researchers from Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast said they discovered a pod of six dolphins while surveying Hervey Bay in southern Queensland in September 2022. At that moment, a dolphin jumped out of the water and stunned the researchers.
Georgina Hume, a dolphin researcher and lead author of the study that recorded the dolphins, said in a news release: “The speck popped out of the water three times in an upright vertical position, while the rest of the pod jumped out of the water in an upright vertical position. “I am exercising,” he said. From university. “This allowed us to see very clearly the underside, which had a lot of white areas and white stripes on the dorsal and lateral sides.”
Georgina Hume/University of the Sunshine Coast
These “nearly symmetrical white spots” had never been observed before in their years of research of this type. And aside from a healed shark bite on its side, the dolphin appeared to be generally healthy, ruling out the possibility that the discoloration was caused by disease or sunburn, the researchers said.
So what could be the cause? According to the university, it is an “extremely rare skin disease” called patchy baldness. Speckles are so rare that speckles are one of only 24 reported cases of the disease in dolphins worldwide, and the photographed case of the disease in dolphins is one of his six cases. One of them. This is the first case of this species recorded in Australia and the second recorded in the Southern Hemisphere.
Behavioral ecologist Alexis Leavengood said in a news release from the university that the condition is associated with albinism, a genetic mutation that results in a lack of melanin, and a partial form of pigmentation that, unlike albinism, does not affect the eyes. He said it is similar to albinism, which is a loss of skin.
Georgina Hume/University of the Sunshine Coast
“Patchy alopecia is a partial loss of pigmentation, so individuals exhibit this patchy tone,” Liebengood said in the release. She also told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “The best part about real science is seeing something for the first time and experiencing it for yourself.”
“I’ve worked in this field for about 15 years across three different continents,” Liebengood told ABC. “And I had never seen it in person, so when I brought the pictures home, it was a very exciting afternoon for us.”
The discovery was published in the scientific journal Aquatic Mammals.
Researchers do not yet know the dolphin’s sex, but they hope to obtain more images and perform genetic sampling to learn more about its condition.
Speckles is one of the few dolphins known to have the disease, but cases have been reported in other species.