Puppy with green fur born in Italy

Puppy with green fur born in Italy




Pistachio the green dog. Cristian Mallocci via Reuters

By Caitlin O'Kane

An Italian farmer welcomed a litter of five dogs earlier this month — and one of the pups stood out among the rest. Cristian Mallocci couldn't believe his eyes when one of them was born with green fur, Reuters reports.

Mallocci's dog, Spelacchia, gave birth to four other dogs with white fur, the same color as hers. Spelacchia is mixed-breed, but that doesn't explain why one of her pups came out with green fur.

The strange pigmentation is believed to occur when pale puppies come in contact with biliverdin in their mother's womb, according to Reuters. Biliverdin is also the pigment that makes bruises to sometimes appear green.

The dog, however, won't always be green. The color will continually fade as the puppy grows and gets older, Reuters reports.

Still, Mallocci, who runs a farm on the island of Sardinia, promptly chose a fitting name for the green dog: Pistachio.

It is extremely rare for a dog to be born with green fur, but other pups like Pistachio have made headlines before. In 2017, when a green puppy was born in Massachusetts, a young boy with his own rare condition adopted him, CBS Boston reported.

Earlier this year, a green puppy was born outside of Asheville, North Carolina. The dog's family appropriately named him The Hulk, CBS affiliate WNCN-TV reported.

It paid off being the odd one out — the rest of Pistachio's brothers and sisters will be given new homes, while Pistachio will stay on the farm. Mallocci will train Pistachio to look after sheep, just like Spelacchia, Reuters reports. 

Green is a symbol of luck and hope, so it may have been meant to be that the dog could make people smile amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mallocci said.



CAM


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

Image
Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda. By   DARREN LINVILL   &   PATRICK WARREN Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t  “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,”  as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy. Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously. MORE: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/ P...
Read more

The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term

Image
The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term   (Photo: Photos: Getty Images) Americans will almost certainly go to bed on Nov. 3 without knowing who won the presidential election. Since millions of people will vote by mail, constraints on time and resources will slow ballot counting into potentially a weeks-long process. Voting patterns suggest it’s likely that President  Donald Trump  could end Election Day in the lead in certain key states, only to be overtaken by Democratic opponent  Joe Biden  when more votes are tallied.  This could create a nightmare scenario during the three months stretching from Election Day to the Jan. 20 inauguration: a battle on the state and congressional level over who is the legitimate winner. This could include Congress reconvening on Jan. 6, presided over by Vice President  Mike Pence , with no consensus over its potential role in choosing the next president. This...
Read more

When Life Hands You Lemons

Image
 It's like this folks: sometimes your mind goes blank. Happens more than usual with me of course. Take this forum for instance. I wanted to post something today and couldn't think of a topic. At least not a non-sexual one and we know sexual ones lately have been frowned upon.  Then along comes one of our regulars and complains about something. Well, they might not say it was a complaint, just an observation, but it was a complaint. A minor one. It has something to do about being able to make something out of nothing. Sort of like me this morning, how to make a thread out of an empty head? But they (notice I am using the correct pronoun, not saying he or she), by what they said got me thinking. What I thought was: Not sure if that is the actual saying, if I remember correctly, I remember the saying going something like this: Umm, no, I don't think the saying I am thinking of goes that way either, maybe ONE of you good folks can remind me how the saying goes. Either way, when...
Read more