CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 81 of 120

Correct — B, Odisha. In July 2020 a farmer named Basudev Mahapatra found an entirely yellow turtle while working in his fields at Sujanpur village in the Soro block of Balasore district, Odisha, and handed it to the forest department. It was an Indian flapshell turtle, Lissemys punctata, a common freshwater species — but this one had a yellow shell, a yellow body and pink eyes. Siddhartha Pati of the Association for Biodiversity Conservation identified the cause as albinism, a congenital condition marked by the complete or partial absence of the pigment tyrosine, and the pink eyes are the giveaway, since without pigment the blood vessels of the eye show through. He described it as the first such find in Odisha and the second in India. The turtle was released back into the wild, and the CNN report of 21 July 2020 carried the story worldwide, which is what put it in a November 2020 exam.

• (a)Uttarakhand — Uttarakhand is Himalayan and sub-Himalayan and has no part in this story. The find was in the coastal plain of northern Odisha.
• (c)Tamil Nadu — Tamil Nadu has famous turtle-conservation work along its coast for olive ridleys, but the yellow flapshell turtle was not found there.
• (d)Arunachal Pradesh — Arunachal Pradesh is a hotspot for rare turtle species, which makes it a plausible-sounding option, but this particular animal came from Balasore in Odisha.

Albinism is a congenital condition in which the pigment melanin is not produced, or is produced only partly, because of a defect in the pathway that begins with the amino acid tyrosine. In reptiles it leaves the animal yellow, white or pinkish, with unpigmented eyes that appear pink or red. It is a serious handicap in the wild — no camouflage, and greater sensitivity to sunlight — which is why albino individuals are rarely seen. The Indian flapshell turtle itself is an ordinary and widespread species of ponds, canals and slow rivers across South Asia, named for the flaps of skin on the plastron that cover the limbs when it withdraws.

Current-affairs items like this are anchored by the month rather than by the year, because more than one such animal can turn up. This exam was written in November 2020, and the Odisha find was in July of that year. A second yellow flapshell turtle was reported from Burdwan district in West Bengal in November 2020, after the paper was set, so a candidate revising today has to be careful not to let the later sighting displace the earlier one. As of now the species remains common and the yellow individuals remain rare curiosities rather than a distinct variety.

• The yellow turtle was rescued in July 2020 from Sujanpur village, Soro block, Balasore district, Odisha.
• It was an Indian flapshell turtle, Lissemys punctata, with a yellow shell and body and pink eyes.
• Experts attributed the colour to albinism, described as the complete or partial absence of the pigment tyrosine.
• It was reported as the first such find in Odisha and the second in India, and the animal was released back into the wild.
• A second yellow flapshell turtle was reported from Burdwan district, West Bengal, in November 2020, after this paper was set.

• Confusing this freshwater flapshell turtle with the marine olive ridleys that nest on the Odisha coast.
• Attaching the find to West Bengal, where a second yellow turtle appeared later in 2020.
• Calling the animal a new species. It is an albino individual of a common species.

As a state-identification item on a news story, or as a species-and-cause question about the colour.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The rare yellow turtle reported from Odisha in 2020 belonged to which species?

  • (a)Olive ridley
  • (b)Indian flapshell turtle
  • (c)Indian star tortoise
  • (d)Leatherback turtle

  Answer(b) Indian flapshell turtle — a common freshwater species; the individual was an albino, with a yellow body and pink eyes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Pink or red eyes in an albino animal are explained by

  • (a)an excess of melanin in the iris
  • (b)the absence of pigment, so that blood vessels show through
  • (c)a reflective layer behind the retina
  • (d)a diet rich in carotenoids

  Answer(b) the absence of pigment, so that blood vessels show through — the same pigment failure that leaves the shell and skin yellow or white.