Almost all Asian elephants in Australian zoos (past and present) originated in South-East Asia, rather than India and Sri Lanka, and seem to be uniform in colour. Many Indian elephants however appear to have paler areas (almost pink) around the edge of the ears, and sometimes the eyes and trunk. Is this a reliable indication of race? I must admit to not knowing much about racial differences in Asian elephants. Are there any other visible differences between races?
When I visited Chitwan National Park in Nepal several of our lodge's elephant had the pigmentation you describe. According to the guides there, this is a sign of the age of the elephant: the more pale patches, the older the animal.
@NZ Jeremy: They are more or less light-skinned, "pinkish" individuals, but not really white. B I S E A N: CHARACTERISTICS OF A TRUE WHITE ELEPHANT The only really white elephant I saw so far was on a very old zoo postcard, but I'm pretty sure that it had the same "background" as Grzimek's "White" Elephant on a All Fool's Day...
@NZ Jeremy: Could You please spare me the constant bitching whenever I respond to one of Your questions? Don't always assume that my main and only purpose in life is to be set as Your personal wisenheimer. I saw that You put "white" in " ", responded to that in general and gave a link which partly answers Your question. So no reason to go snappy once again...
You could save yourself the hassle by assuming whenever I ask a question it's directed at everyone but you... Thanks
@MARK: No problem; I was just surprised by his reaction. @NZ Jeremy: And You could spare Yourself Your gnarling & snarling if You just treated my answers like that of anyone else. If I know the answer of a question or feel like being able to contribute something interesting, I see no reason not to respond to it just because You are its author...Enough said. An interesting article about an Albino elephant in Sri Lanka BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | In search of the albino elephant And about the Grzimek joke : Photo Gallery: April Fools' Day Pranks - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
Nice work Sun try and buddy up to MARK after he's asked us not to keep posting... in an extra post... How sad, nothing better to do than respond to people who have no interest in your answers... Maybe you should join one of those cults that go door to door with the bicycles and the suits; you'd probably be more popular with the neighbours than you are on this board... Let me guess after you left for those few months last time you tried to join a German zoo board and they had no interest in you..? So you came crawling back to this one..? The definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting different results, so why do you think if you keep on replying to me (unwarranted I might add) in the same pedantic, condescending, longwinded, rambling manner you should expect me not to reply to you with disdain..? I apologise MARK but I’m sick of this guy...
Nice attempt to poison the thread, @NZ-Jeremy, but sorry; I respect MARK's opinion as a moderator and won't cater to Your emotional outbreaks. If the BBC article about the reason for the pinkish appearance is correct, I wonder whether a more hairy Albino elephant, like the Sumatrans or young elephants, might appear really white...EDIT: I found the old postcard photo: WHITE ELEPHANT
I was going to ask if anyone had heard anything about albino African elephants (seeing as white ones, be they albino, leucistic, pale-skinned, hoax, whatever, always seem to be Asian) but I found this from this year: Partially Albino Elephant Whiter Shade of Tail the original source with photo is here (original report from 2006) African Safari News - February 2007 also found this interesting article on Asian elephants: M a h i d o l U n i v e r s i t y - - - -
