Rare yellow-colored turtle rescued in Odisha

Bhubaneswa: Residents of Sujanpur village in Balasore district of Odisha were in for a rare sight on Sunday as they spotted a yellow turtle.

The locals rescued this rare and unique looking turtle on Sunday and then informed the state forest department officials and, later, handed over the turtle to them. The entire body, including its shell of the turtle was yellow with pink eyes.

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The turtle is believed to be an albino with its characteristic yellow color and pink eyes. For turtles, albinism is quite different than in humans or even birds and is quite rarely found. Additionally, very few baby turtles make it to adulthood and the chances of finding a stand-out yellow turtle are even lower. This is the reason why this yellow turtle is going quite viral on social media.

Indian Forest Services officer Susanta Nanda also believes the turtle to an albino. He took to Twitter to shares a video of the photogenic turtle and captioned it as, “A rare yellow turtle was spotted & rescued in Balasore, Odisha yesterday. Most probably it was an albino. One such aberration was recorded by locals in Sindh a few years back.”

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In another post, Nanda posted a close-up picture of the turtle and said, “Mark the pink eyes, one indicative feature of albinism.”

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Many Twitter users wrote that they have never seen a yellow-colored turtle before. One user tweeted, “Seems to be an albino snapping turtle? It’s albinism I think? We see similar ones in other animals as well. Recently they found an albino tiger in Kaziranga.”

Meanwhile, just last month a rare species of Trionychidae turtle was caught at Deuli Dam in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district by fishermen. These are soft-shelled turtles and are found in Asia, North America, and Africa.