ROE deer have sandy red-brown coats in summer and grey-brown ones in winter, but an all-white individual has been born on a Scottish estate.
According to a report in The Sunday Times, the location is being kept secret to protect the deer from poachers. Love of an unusual and exotic animal is not, alas, the motive; the holder of stalking rights in the area wants to make a killing from a killing.
He is taking bids from hunters for the privilege of shooting the unfortunate animal.
A trophy hunter might pay up to £6,000 to have the head over his mantelpiece. The shooting season opens on April 1.
Animal rights activities are angry; they think the deer should be protected. A spokeswoman for the League against Cruel Sports is quoted as saying that "to kill a rare species that should be enjoyed by the wider public beggars belief".
But the deer does not belong to a separate species; it’s an ordinary roe which happens to be white.
Nor are roe "rare" in Britain. In fact, this is the most numerous of the country’s six kinds of deer; there are estimated to be about 800,000 of them.
If deer are being culled, should an individual be spared just because it is white? It’s a difficult question.
Killing may seem cruel, but numbers have to be reduced for the animals’ own good; the habitat on which they depend must be protected.
In the old days, wolves kept the population in check but, having exterminated these top predators, we have to do the culling ourselves.
White animals are rare, but individuals turn up from time to time.
An all-white red deer stag was reported from the west coast of the highlands in February 2008. The location was kept secret, but video footage of the animal was obtained. The killing of a white stag on the Devon-Cornwall border, a year earlier, had been widely condemned.
In some cultures, ghostly white creatures are deemed to be supernatural beings or messengers from the gods. Moby Dick was a mythical white sperm whale and pink elephants are considered sacred in Thailand.
A white stag appearing in the woods around King Arthur’s court was a signal that the knights’ heroic services were required. Richard II’s heraldic symbol was a white deer.
Reports say that the Scottish animal is white all over. However, it’s unlikely to be a true albino. Albinism is a very rare genetically-induced condition in which the body produces no colour pigments at all. The tissues retain their natural colour; hair is white, the eyes are red and any exposed flesh is pink. "Leucism", a condition in which there is shortage of certain pigments, is much more common.
Birds, such as blackbirds and jackdaws, often have pale patches on the plumage; shortages of certain substances in the diet can impair a bird’s ability to produce melanin.
Some forms of leucism, however, are the result of selection, either natural or artificial. Poulterers, for example, have selectively bred white strains of farmyard fowl. Birds which don’t produce melanin need less food than brightly coloured ones. They grow up more quickly and so give a better return on the farmer’s investment.
We, northern Europeans, are an example of naturally-selected leucism. Our ancestors were Africans, whose skin contained lots of melanin to protection it from the merciless tropical sun. However, when our forebears arrived in Europe about 50,000 years ago, their dark skin was a liability during the dark winter months.
To synthesise vitamin D, sunlight needs to penetrate the skin. Melanin blocks the light, leading to vitamin D deficiency which causes diseases such as rickets. In time, the new Europeans evolved largely pigment-free skin, but people from tropical countries who move to northern Europe are still vulnerable.
According to the geneticist, Steve Jones, the Neanderthals, who were already in Europe when our ancestors arrived, also had pale skin; the genes which govern skin pigmentation in Europeans have been found in Neanderthal DNA. The adaptation for vitamin D production, however, comes at a price.
Getting rid of melanin increases the risk of skin cancer, which kills about 2,000 people in Britain every year.
Fair-skinned Irish people are particularly vulnerable to the disease.
Cover up and wear a hat.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, March 23, 2009
