In the Chinese Ming Dynasty classical mythological novel "Fengshen Yanyi", the Guangmu Heavenly King Mo Lishou has a living divine beast magic weapon, fierce and abnormal, which stays in the treasure bag like the size of a white rat, and the body becomes larger like a white elephant, and the ribs are born with flying wings, which can eat people when they fly out, known as "flower fox marten". In mythological descriptions, the "flower fox mink" is a white mink. Today, this mythical beast not only exists in myths and legends, it has "descended" into the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park.
Mink is a genus of mink in the mammalian order Mustelidae, there are a total of 8 species of mink in the world, and it is one of the important medium-sized carnivores. They are widely distributed in Eurasia and North America. In China, there are 3 species of mink species: sable, stone marten, and yellow-throated marten. Among them, the yellow-throated marten is widely distributed, and it is distributed in northeast China, north China, south China and other places. The Siberian Tiger and Leopard National Park has a large number of yellow-throated martens. The normal form of the yellow-throated marten is the upper part of the head and the top of the head, the limbs and the back half of the body are tan or black, and the rest is lightly colored. The white yellow-throated marten was first found in China's Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park.
It is understood that the color of wild animals has a mutated color pattern, which is not easy to occur in nature. In the Siberian Tiger and Leopard National Park, many yellow-throated martens with body color variations have been found, which is a rare phenomenon in the world.
Since 2006, the tiger and leopard team of Beijing Normal University has established a large-scale infrared camera long-term positioning monitoring network in many provinces in China, and obtained millions of wildlife monitoring video data. In the video surveillance data from the northeast region, researchers found a distinctive yellow-throated mink, its front half almost all white. As observational data gradually accumulated, researchers gradually discovered individual yellow-throated mink with white claws, white feet, white heads, and a variety of different variations of color types that were white all over their bodies. This is the first time in the world that the coexistence of multiple color variants has been found in mink species, which provides an important reference for the study of animal coat color variation.
The appearance of yellow-throated martens with all-over white and different variations of color is due to abnormalities in melanin formation or composure during the formation of yellow-throated mink hair color. Among them, the white yellow-throated mink is the result of a genetic mutation, and due to the lack of tyrosinase in albinosits, melanin cannot be synthesized, resulting in white coat color, forming an albino phenomenon.
In the Siberian Tiger and Leopard National Park, not only yellow-throated martens with body color variations have been found, but also wild white roe deer with body color variations. Historical records of the discovery of white roe deer are very rare. Except for a discovery in Inner Mongolia in 1981, the documented white roe deer dates back to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.
On April 5, 2020, in the jurisdiction of the Daxinggou Branch of the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, the monitoring system of the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park filmed an extremely rare video of an animal with a white body of deer foraging. This discovery is the first time that white roe deer have been found in the northeast region.
Roe deer are three protected animals in China, adult individuals are about 1.2 meters long, weigh 30 kg, and the whole body is grass yellow. White roe deer are also the result of genetic mutations. The emergence of the white roe deer and the white yellow-throated marten marks the initial results of ecosystem construction and biodiversity conservation since the pilot operation of the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park system.
Located in the core area of the temperate coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest in the northeast, the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park is the most biodiverse area in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere, and more than 100 species that have been listed in the list of wild animals under national key protection currently exist.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhao Hanlu Text Editor: Song Hui Caption Source: Tu Worm Image Editor: Zhu Xuan
Source: Author: CCTV News Client