Rescue call at night 9:30 from Mr. Shreeram, that a pure white snake is there inside their home. Many a times we got rescues like these as people out of fear disguise these reptiles as aliens. But when we reached the spot, it has another story to tell that is beyond our imagination. It’s a completely white morphed like reptile with red eye balls. We have never ever find such type of snake in our last 9000 rescues in last five years. We safely capture the reptile and send its images to our experts.
To our amaze, the species was a “Checkered Keelback” but in albino form. Albinoism is the lack of certain gene which was responsible for animal’s pigmentation. Due to this lack of gene, the creature gets pale in color. Some of the examples of albinoism were “White Tiger”, albino deer etc. Albinos were known to be very delicate and chances of their survival up till adult stage are less. Still there are creatures which survive upto adult stage, breed and produce off springs.
The albinos of animal world in India were protected under Schedule 1 of Wildlife Protection Act. The reptile was safe and ready to be released into the wild.
Albinos in checkered keelback were rarely recorded and as per publications, this is third or forth time when such species was sighted and recorded.