Visitors have been captivated by a pod of dolphins in Lousiana river, but one particular dolphin is special, she is not gray like most of her peers – she’s pink!
Meet Pinky, the legendary dolphin that’s been a long time attraction for boaters in Louisiana. For years, she has swum its waters, shocking everyone who catches a glimpse of her with her unique pink color.
Dolphins’ bellies are naturally tinged with a pink hue, but one that is pink all throughout is just exceptional. According to scientists, pink dolphins might have albinism, which occurs when cells that make the pigment melanin fail to produce it at normal levels, or at all.
Aside from her inability to open her eyes all the way and her color, Pinky is just a regular dolphin.
For years, there’s been a debate regarding Pinky’s gender since nobody has confirmed it. Many assumed that she was female solely because of her color, but as it turns out, there’s one lucky person who got close enough to take close-up photos of her mating with another dolphin.
A captain of a charter boat named Erik Rue claimed that he is the first person ever to see Pinky from a pod of dolphins, capture photos of her swimming around Lake Charles, Louisiana. According to him, he’s known about Pinky since June 2007, as the curious dolphin would swim as close as 10 feet to his boat.
But in 2015, Rue swore that he finally figured out that Pinky is indeed a “she”.
“I’ve taken a ton of pictures of her mating and it proved she’s a female,” he told ABC News. “I believe I’m the first one who saw her and I know I’m the first one to take pictures of her.”
In 2017, Bridget Boudreaux and her husband were riding the Calcasieu Ship channel when they spotted Pinky with another pink dolphin.
“It was amazing to see. Like I said we saw two but I couldn’t get both on video at the time. I was astonished,” she said.
The dolphins in the video were following a ship on the Calcasieu Ship Channel. Unfortunately, even if Boudreaux was certain that she saw two pink dolphins, the other one vanished before she could snap a clear photo of them.
“When we saw the first one, we stopped to watch them all play. There were regular dolphins and then two pink dolphins. They were either mating or eating. We watched them for a while until that ship came and they went towards it,” she told KATC.
Here’s Boudreaux’s video of Pinky that she shared with KATC.
And since we’ve established that Pinky is female, people have been wondering if she’s already pregnant, given that she’s been very active during the mating season.
These questions were answered when another video of her emerged in 2018, and this time, the lucky witness captured the two rare pink dolphins on video!
Facebook user Thomas Adams caught sight of the dolphins on the Calcasieu Ship Channel.
How majestic! These people are very lucky to have seen Pinky in person from a pod of dolphins, especially the ones who saw her swimming with her little calf.
Check out ABC News’ report on Pinky in the video below.
Do you have a photo or video of Pinky to share with us? We’d love to see them!
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