TCPalm.com and AP

Animal control officials say a white alligator seen resting at a subdivision along Florida’s Atlantic coast is not a rare albino alligator.

Rather, the 300-pound, 10-foot-long adult alligator, gets its color from a coating of white minerals from untreated water pouring out of an artesian well that empties into the lake it swims in.

TCPalm.com

In early December, residents of Vista Plantation began seeing the unusually large white-colored alligator in the community’s lakes west of the Indian River Mall, said subdivision manager Charles Smith.

“It was pure white,” he said.

But when park officials called in a wildlife official to verify the alligator is albino, they learned the coloring is instead a coating of white minerals from untreated water pouring out of an artesian well emptying into the lake.

Bruce Dangerfield, Vero Beach Police animal control officer, humorously offered to pull the animal out to prove his point.

“I offered to catch it and use a scrub brush,” Dangerfield said to prove it, to which subdivision officials declined.

Officials say the coating is on the animal’s thick skin and isn’t a threat to its health.

“The plants around that area were white, too,” Dangerfield said. “When the alligator crawls onto the shore to sun, the coating dries into a crusty white material.”

The subdivision has 17 interconnected fairway lakes and other alligators in the subdivision are a normal darker black.

According to Dangerfield, the large white alligator lacks a distinguishing trait of a true albino alligator: pink eyes. And it is large — about 10 feet long — when most albino alligators are killed much younger in life because they lack natural dark colors that help camouflage them in the wild.

ALBINO ALLIGATORS

The United States has an estimated 30 known albino alligators, making them an extreme oddity out of the estimated 5 million in the wild in the southern part of the country.

• They are white because they lack the genes for color. Normally, alligators are blackish.

• Because of the lack of color, albino alligators can get sunburned.

• Most albino alligators are in zoos or tourist attractions.

Information provided by several environmental Web sites

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