What would your guess be if I told you that sea snakes are turning black? If you guessed pollution, you are right! Pollution from mining activities has been found to cause snakes to change from colorful skins to black skin. Studies have shown that the snakes are most likely changing color to try and blend in with the polluted environment.
Previous studies have shown that the peppered moth was also dark-colored during England’s Industrial Revolution. Schoolchildren were taught an oversimplification that living organisms, such as insects, blended well with the soot-covered trees near industrial areas, so their odds of surviving and breeding suddenly rose.
“An example of any industrial melanism, the prevalence of dark-colored varieties of animals in industrial areas where they are better camouflaged against predators paler forms, in vertebrates is scarce,” says Rick Shine at the University of Sydney, but the Indo-Pacific sea snakes he and his colleagues may provide a good example.
The turtle-headed sea snake, also known as emydocephalus annulatus, is primarily found in tropical waters near Australia. Typically, these snakes are black and white, with stripes like candy canes. However, these snakes turned black near polluted areas of New Caledonia, a French Territory northeast of Brisbane. Plus, a nearby barrier reef is being used as a bombing range, and the snakes living there are entirely black.
Shine and his colleagues already knew the issue; since pollutants such as arsenic or lead can bind to melanin, a dark pigment in the skin, they decided whether this was the same phenomenon as with the black snakes.
According to Shine, the snakes primarily pick up the pollutants from the prey they eat: E. annulatus likes to nibble on the eggs of small fish like gobies and damselfish that breed close to shore. These shallow waters, particularly near the New Caledonian city of Noumea, are highly polluted by intensive mining activity and industrialization, which is why the sea snakes have black-colored skin.
This is why we need to take care of our planet. The Earth is becoming more polluted as plastic is littered, the ground is mined, and many other things occur that destroy the planet. We have to save the Earth together!
Previous studies have shown that the peppered moth was also dark-colored during England’s Industrial Revolution. Schoolchildren were taught an oversimplification that living organisms, such as insects, blended well with the soot-covered trees near industrial areas, so their odds of surviving and breeding suddenly rose.
“An example of any industrial melanism, the prevalence of dark-colored varieties of animals in industrial areas where they are better camouflaged against predators paler forms, in vertebrates is scarce,” says Rick Shine at the University of Sydney, but the Indo-Pacific sea snakes he and his colleagues may provide a good example.
The turtle-headed sea snake, also known as emydocephalus annulatus, is primarily found in tropical waters near Australia. Typically, these snakes are black and white, with stripes like candy canes. However, these snakes turned black near polluted areas of New Caledonia, a French Territory northeast of Brisbane. Plus, a nearby barrier reef is being used as a bombing range, and the snakes living there are entirely black.
Shine and his colleagues already knew the issue; since pollutants such as arsenic or lead can bind to melanin, a dark pigment in the skin, they decided whether this was the same phenomenon as with the black snakes.
According to Shine, the snakes primarily pick up the pollutants from the prey they eat: E. annulatus likes to nibble on the eggs of small fish like gobies and damselfish that breed close to shore. These shallow waters, particularly near the New Caledonian city of Noumea, are highly polluted by intensive mining activity and industrialization, which is why the sea snakes have black-colored skin.
This is why we need to take care of our planet. The Earth is becoming more polluted as plastic is littered, the ground is mined, and many other things occur that destroy the planet. We have to save the Earth together!
