日本一白色海豚激动时变粉色

A rare albino dolphin that can go from white to pink when it is feeling flushed is pulling in the crowds at a water park in Japan.

日本的一家水上公园中，一只珍稀的白化变种海豚在情绪激动的时候身体颜色会从白色变为粉色，这一奇观吸引了许多游客在此驻足流连。

Although bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops) are usually grey, this extremely rare creature is an albino and has no colouration – apart from a tendency to turn pink when feeling flushed.

尽管宽吻海豚通常是灰色的，这只极为罕见的宽吻海豚却因为是白化变种而没有色彩——除了兴奋时会变粉。

Photos show how the animal is normally white, and occasionally pink when swimming along regular coloured grey dolphins.

从照片中可以看出，这只海豚平常是白色的，和寻常的灰色海豚一起游泳，偶尔才会变成粉色。

Albino mammals are born without melanin, which gives the colour to both eyes and skin, and albino dolphins are extremely rare.

白化哺乳动物在出生的时候体内就不含黑色素，而黑色素会让动物眼睛和皮肤有颜色。白化变种海豚是非常罕见的。

In fact this specimen is believed to be only the second one ever put on display in an aquarium after it was purchased from fishermen.

事实上，据认为这是有史以来在水族馆展出的第二只白化变种海豚，这只海豚是从渔民那里买来的。

And they may well have been doing the animal a favour, as albinos are easy prey out at sea as they lack the colouration to blend in like their grey coloured relatives.

渔民们把这只海豚卖到水族馆可能倒是帮了它一个大忙，因为这只海豚在海上很容易被捕猎者发现，因为它不能像它灰色的同胞一样混迹于大海中。

Experts said that it was remarkable that the animal had actually lived so long before ending up at the Taiji Whale Museum, in Higashimuro District, in southern Japan's Wakayama Prefecture.

专家表示，这只海豚到太地町鲸鱼博物馆定居之前，能存活这么长时间已经很令人惊奇。太地町鲸鱼博物馆位于日本和歌山县南部的东牟娄郡。

Controversially, the creature was captured during the annual dolphin hunt in the town of Taiji.

这只海豚是在太地町一年一度的海豚捕猎期间捕获的，这一点颇具争议性。

The town and the hunt was made notorious by the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," which shows fishermen herding dolphins into a cove either to be captured for aquariums or killed for meat.

2009年奥斯卡获奖纪录片《海豚湾》致使太地町的捕猎活动臭名昭著。纪录片中展示了渔民们的捕猎活动，他们在一个小海湾里围捕海豚，要么把它们抓起来送进水族馆，要么就杀掉吃肉。

It was reported that 1,218 dolphins and small whales were captured there in 2011, though it did not specify how many of those captured were killed.

据报道，在2011年海豚捕猎活动中捕到了1218只海豚和小鲸，但没有明确说明其中有多少只被杀。

But the rare albino was one that did survive.

不过这只罕见的白化海豚是幸存者。

Since then it has become the subject of a detailed study by the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology and the Institute of Cetacean Research who recently published a paper on the fascinating creature.

其后，这只海豚成为了东京大学海洋科学技术专业和日本鲸类研究所的详细研究课题，他们近期还发表了一篇关于这一迷人生物的论文。

Vocabulary

flushed: 激动的

bottlenose dolphin: 宽吻海豚

albino: 白化病者

melanin: 黑色素

aquarium: 水族馆