Like a polar bear with horns

Watch out — that polar bear you see may actually turn out to be an albino muskox.

Mitch Campbell, a biologist with the Government of Nunavut in Arviat, told CanWest Global this week about the rare albino muskox he spotted during a recent aerial survey of Ellesmere Island.

When Campbell flew over a small herd, the bright-white muskox stood out “like a neon sign.”

“When you see an animal that’s normally very dark brown, when you see that animal pure white, it’s kind of heart-stopping,” he told CanWest.

Campbell is not the first to see an albino muskox in the High Arctic.

During waterfowl surveys in August 1971, Ernie Kuyt from the Canadian Wildlife Service saw a light-coloured muskox in the herd of 23 along the Atkinson Point River. In the journal Arctic, Kuyt described the muskox as a large adult of a “pale creamy-yellow” colour. Photographs taken at the time show the muskox was accompanied by a yearling of normal brown colour.

“We were unable to get a good look at the cow’s horns but they appeared paler than in muskoxen,” Kuyt wrote.

Early explorer Frederic Mcdougall saw another adult albino cow muskox on June 18, 1853, at Cape Smyth, Melville Island. That muskox was followed by a black calf.

Albinism, which comes from Latin word albus, meaning “white,” is a lack of pigmentation in the eyes, skin and hair. It is an inherited condition resulting from the combination of recessive genes passed from both parents of an individual, which is known to affect mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.

The gene prevents the body from making the usual amounts of a pigment called melanin that protects the skin from ultraviolet light coming from the sun.

Organisms with albinism lack this protective pigment in their skin, and can burn easily from exposure to the sun as a result. Lack of melanin in the eye also results in problems with vision.

However, albinos are generally as healthy as the rest of their species, with growth and development occurring as normal.

But some lose their protective camouflage and are unable to conceal themselves, so the survival rate of albino animals in the wild is low.