Meet Pinkie, one of the rarest dolphins in the world! This unique dolphin is bright, bubblegum pink.
Captain Erik Rue was the first person to spot Pinkie all the way back in 2007. Rue is a charter boat captain with Calcasieu Charter Service in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In June 2007, he and four other people on his boat spotted Pinkie, who was a baby then. She was swimming her with mom, looking as happy as could be. Rue couldn’t believe his eyes!
Word quickly spread about this unique dolphin, and more and more people started coming to Lake Charles just to see her. But even after seeing photos, people are still shocked to see how pink Pinkie actually is.
“I think many are a bit surprised when they actually see it and it’s actually bright pink like we’ve told them,” Rue told ABC. “They say ‘Oh my gosh it’s really pink.’ They are surprised that it’s just the way we described it to them.
Rue has taken tons of incredible photos of Pinkie over the years. He hopes to one day compile them into a coffee-table book.
Scientists aren’t positive why Pinkie is pink, but they believe it may either be a form of albinism or a rare genetic mutation. Kerry Sanchez, a dolphin expert from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, thinks that’s it a form of genetic variation:
“So what they get from mom and what they get from dad means they can look a little bit different than that perfect image we expect,” Sánchez told WFLA. “Seeing an animal that is extremely light in color is not something we would normally expect to see. And in my full time here, we’ve never seen an animal that looks like that.”
Over the years, a few different people have been able to capture video of Pinkie swimming. In 2013, filmmakers from Kingdom Zoo took an incredible video of Pinkie swimming with some of her friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx9RmsBYQMU
In August 2017, a woman named Bridget Bourdreaux captured another video of Pinkie. Bourdeaux said that she saw Pinkie swimming with a tiny pink dolphin who might have been her calf. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to capture video of both dolphins.
“I about fell out the boat,” Boudreaux told KHOU. “I was like, wow, that’s not a regular dolphin, that’s a pink dolphin.”
The little pink dolphin hasn’t been spotted again yet, but all of Pinkie’s fans are hoping that this baby dolphin will reappear soon.
In the years since Pinkie was first spotted, she has become an internet celebrity. She now has a Facebook page with thousands of followers who love getting news about their favorite dolphin.
Pinkie is a truly unique dolphin that has captured the world’s attention. This rare dolphin is truly an amazing sight to see!
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