# Blue albino rats



## theRatGirl (Feb 25, 2015)

Today someone emailed me asking about "blue albino dumbo rats" I told them that rats could either be blue or albino, but not blue albino. Was I wrong? Do blue albino rats exist?


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## kksrats (Jul 25, 2014)

Considering albinism is the lack of pigment from the skin/eyes, no, there can't be blue albino's. I think that a lot of people tend to just associate red eyes with albinos and may think that that's all it takes; so perhaps they saw a very light blue rat with red eyes and considered it albino. Who knows. You were not wrong to correct them.


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## Sabatea (Aug 23, 2014)

There is a color known as the marten or the "red eyed devil" that is a blue rat with red eyes. Calling it albino isn't technically correct, as kkrats explained. :3


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## Jaguar (Nov 15, 2009)

Well... albinism is the lack of pigment (melanin). A rat can be any color or marking "underneath" the albinism, so to speak. I don't know if that's what they meant by that.


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## FallDeere (Sep 29, 2011)

Maybe they were refering to the albino rats injected with blue dye? http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341bf67c53ef0120a53bcfb0970c-pi A simple google search of "Blue Albino Rats" can show some experiments that resulted in albino rats turning blue.


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## kksrats (Jul 25, 2014)

For anyone interested in why scientists are turning rats blue (yes, there's a good reason lol). Here are some of the articles referring to the dye they used and why they used it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3716845/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4142730/

Long story short, the disabilities involved in spinal trauma are associated with cell death of neurons. The blue dye has the ability to attach itself to a receptor that mediates that cell death, thus keeping cells from dying. The unfortunate side effect is that it turns the skin blue lol


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## Grotesque (Mar 19, 2014)

Huh... how odd. I saw that picture on Google images and without looking more into it, thought it was photoshopped.


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