Rare black squirrel spotted in Vadodara

VADODARA: Almost all of you might have seen ‘Bageera’, the fictional melanistic panther made famous by The Jungle Book. Now, a melanistic squirrel has been spotted in the city.
A teacher at city-based Navrachana University and wildlife enthusiast Dr Karan Rana has spotted this squirrel and even recorded its first photographic evidence of its presence in Gujarat.

Melanism is a universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom. It is development of dark coloured pigment - melanin - in the skin or its appendages. Due to melanism, the coat of the animal becomes dark in colour.
The opposite of Melanism is leucism, where there is a total lack of pigmentation in the whole body due to an inherited defect in the pigment transfer process. This results in white or whitish hair, pale skin but normal coloured eyes in animals.
“During this Covid times, when biodiversity is reviving itself, I was surprised to spot a fully-black coloured Indian palm squirrel (funambulus palmarum) near my residence,” said Rana, a resident of Bhayli area of the city.
“I noticed it for the first time on May 22 which co-incidentally was International Day of Biological Diversity. It was foraging for food on the ground in parking area of our apartment but I could not capture its pictures,” he said.
Rana got a chance to collect photographic evidence of its presence on Friday. “I was amazed to see this squirrel right in front of me, through the window, seated on the canopy of ‘sevan tree’. So, I captured images of this rare rodent and also a small video,” he said.
Last year, a zoology teacher M Jayashankar based in Bengaluru had sighted a melanistic squirrel in Devanahalli taluka, a Bengaluru rural district in Karnataka.
“The common commensal squirrel of peninsular India is adapted to living close to human settlements but melanism is a rare phenomenon to be noticed,” he said.
“Historically, melanism was also the medical term for black jaundice. Concentration and distribution of melanin pigment results in such colour aberrations,” added Jayashankar.