Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Nature Is Truly Amazing!

A few days ago, my aunt sent me these pictures and a story behind them. I decided to share them with you because I doubt many of us will ever see something like them again.

According to snopes.com, the exact location of this siting is not clear. Wherever these were taken, they show us an amazing feat of Mother Nature.
Based on the tree line and the topography in these pictures, they were probably taken in Canada or Alaska. One site listed the date as 2006. As you can well imagine, an albino moose is VERY rare. That's right, I'm going to show you an albino moose!

But before I do, Dale Toweill, of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, states, "Albino moose have been showing up near Soda Spring in Southeastern Idaho for several years." He is the trophy species manager for the fish and game commission. Normally, only 1 in 100,000 moose have the albino trait, which is recessive. But the gene appears to run in the herd in Southeastern Idaho, where Toweill theorizes the probability of an albino moose may be 1 in 10,000.
Again, according to snopes.com, these moose are not actually albino, but rather white-colored. You can read the entire story and their explanation by clicking here.

I did a quick Google search on albino moose and came up with a good deal of information on both the albino moose and white-colored moose. I found it fascinating. One fact I especially liked was sightings of albino moose go back for centuries. Some Native American tribes regard these rare animals as spiritual and mystical or even a re-incarnation of a tribe member.

Look at these photos:


Now, if the odds of actually seeing an albino moose are extraordinary based on the probabilities I mentioned above, how astronomical are the odds of seeing two of them at the same time?


To quote the story that came with these pictures, "Once in a while there is an opportunity to take in a piece of nature you may never see. In these days of unrest and turmoil, it is great to see Mother Nature can still produce some wondrous beauty."

I couldn't agree more.

Any comments?

Later,

Mike

P.S. A regular reader saw this post the other day and sent me this note and incredible picture:

I just saw your post about the moose, those are great pictures. On a similar note, our friends who live across the river from Wabasha have seen many albino deer. It's not legal to shoot them in Wisconsin. A few years ago we had our motion camera at their place and got several pictures of this one.



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