Kahleo Thompson

Instead of posting my favorite finds of the year like literally everybody else, I figured I would only post my BEST observation of the year and probably ever until today.

April 1st, I was soaking in the sun in the south of France at my family’s vacation house, I decided to check my messages and I almost jumped out of my chair when I saw that @noe.bas.1 had sent me a pic of a yellowish juvenile viper asking me what it was!

2 days later I was able to meet up with @noe.bas.1 He took me to the spot where he found it literally 5 minutes driving distance from my house☠️ and sure enough, this juvenile Asp Viper (Vipera aspis) was basking at the entrance of a crack right above a water canalization on the side of the road (basically the worst place possible)

When we settled it on a wall a couple meters away, I was absolutely blown away by what I was looking at, I’ve always dreamed of seeing such a snake in the wild but never thought it would happen so quickly !

After many discussions and further investigation, this is most probably an individual displaying a form of amelanism. "Amelanism is a pigmentation abnormality characterized by the lack of pigments called melanins." Often, people mistake this with albinism which is a complete absence of melanism, but here that is not the case. I initially thought this was a case of leucism until I was corrected (in the comment section) a leucistic snake would be jet white with normal pigmented eyes.

Now as you may have noticed, this individual is not white and rather yellowish with hints of pink which could bring one to think that this is Xanthism, which is what I also thought, but apparently no because it’s not yellow enough?! It’s very hard to just look at an individual and be sure of what is going on, unless you do genetic analysis, I don’t think you can truly determine an aberration. There are so many different variations in coloration and pattern especially in the Vipera aspis, one of the most polymorphic species in the world. But based on descriptions and pictures of other snakes, amelanism seems to fit the best.

László Krecsák (2007) “Albinism and leucism among European viperinae : a review”