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eukaryotesrool · 6 months

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Leucism and Kimba

So this is gonna be real life facts (ones I'd say are interesting) mixed with some fan stuff, you don't need to know about the franchise to understand this, but it will be long and only slightly hinged.

Grab a snack, a drink annnnnnd...

What is a Kimba?

(Kimba (1965) running)

This guy, the titular hero of Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion franchise (AKA Jungle Emperor Leo(direct translation), Janguru Taitei(untranslated title))

For now, all you folks need to know about him is that he comes from a long lineage of lions with uniquely white fur.

Gee, you know what else relates to lions, white fur, and genetics, oh boy, a segway into the next thi-

What is a leucism?

(Pronounced 'luke-ism')

(Animals with a leucistic disorder, leucistic peacocks look neat, though, they all do)

leucism is a variety of conditions causing a lack of pigmentation in animals.

"Isn't that albinism?"

They're comparable, but seperate, their causes are different, also no leucistic condition removes eye pigmentation, so, Kimba's blue eyes aren't a problem.

(Kimba (1965) running, he does that a lot)

Now I'd like to go over every major leucistic condition and compare/contrast them to what we can note about Kimba.

No, I am not joking.

(OH MY GOD ITS SO CUTE I- er, this is a real life white lion cub, owing its white fur to a leucistic disorder)

Something to remember, most of these conditions don't (or don't to our knowledge) affect lions and could be easily swatted aside as such, but KTWL (Kimba the White Lion) is a work of fiction which consistently does absurd things, for example, Great Mother, a surviving mammoth who lives on a magic mountain and has magic powers or a blue lion (no I won't tell you what makes him blue), so I'm willing to brush aside SOME realism... also I researched them so I want to talk about them.

Yes, there is a condition that causes real life white lions, buuuuut I'm saving that can of worms for later.

Easily disproven

These ones don't work for several reasons, I'll be using only the most glaring issues for the sake of brevity.

Vitiligo & flavism: These two conditions happen over the course of one's life, but we see Kimba near birth, and he possessed his white fur.

Chédiak–Higashi syndrome: Causes symptoms (including but not limited to: peripheral neuropathy) which Kimba almost certainly does not have.

Isabellinism: affects only birds and leads to a golden white, not a snowy one.

(An isabellinistic bird, majestic fellow, eh?)

Xanthochromism: Makes things fucking yellow.

(A xanthochromistic (pictured right) and normal (pictured left) Argentine horned frog, so cool.)

Axanthism: only affects things with light reflecting pigments, and can only make things with normally yellow color have white color.

Amelanism: Meaning lacking melanin, so those black tipped ears and tail would be a no-no, yet we observe numerous pelts of his ancestors all with the exact same ears, and, we have reason to believe, the exact same tail (his father also possessed the same tail)

Okay, that was the bulk of the list, we're making good progress.

Maybe

These ones are harder to disprove, but I'd still say they're obviously not what we're looking for.

Piebaldism: Now, this one seems convincing as it can generate black AND white fur, it is genetically dominant, therefore, could lead to the continous lineage (where at least one of few children seems to always inherit it) but it lacks the uniformity, as I said, every white lion posses the same pattern, with few inconsistently appearing exceptions within the franchise, we'll get to that later on, the point is, consistency is the rule, chaos is the exception, and piebaldism is too chaotic.

(Piebaldistic animals. That squirrel looks so neat! Like his back is covered in snow!)

Waardenburg syndrome: Specifically type two is a strong contender, most notably because it causes bright blue eyes (or a blue and brown eye, sometimes) along with its other effects, HOWEVER, it also causes congenital hearing loss, and in cats (Felis Catus or house cats, technically, but they're the closest comparison I have to lions) said hearing loss is more common and more extreme, I doubt Kimba has that. Type 1 and type 3 cause other malformities that Kimba visibly doesn't posses.

Not sure

I tried, but my research was not conclusive, if you have answers, I'd be glad to hear them.

melanophilin: it is listed, but isn't a disorder, it is a carrier protein, I did some research and disorders with this protein don't seem like they'd make the snow white color we're looking for.

Undisputable

Oh, uh, there's nothing here, we've gone over every major leucistic disorder, there ARE more, but we'd be here all day, and so little is known about them it'd be arbitary.

Well, we're not through with every leucistic condition on the agenda, there's still...

THE CAUSE OF REAL WHITE LIONS

That's right, we've made it.

There's obviously a myriad of similarities, Tezuka was probably inspired by the real life white lions.

For example

(Pictured left, Kimba (1989 anime series) and his love inyerest, Raiya, a fellow lion, but not a white lion. Pictured right, two lionesses, one being a white lion)

The jarringly (among other lions) snow white fur.

(Sorry the images of Kimba's paw sucks, you won't believe it, but it was SO difficult to find a pic online with his paw pads in it, real life white lions? Pfft plenty of pictures in an instant.)

(Yes, pink is the unpigmented color for paw pads)

The pink paw pads

(Pictured left, Kimba's father (2009 movie) pictured right OH MY GOD SO CUTE)

The genetic basis allowing for lineages that share the trait

So then, this is it?... no, no, no, no, sadly, no, not so simple, there is one glaring inconsistency.

Firstly, an aside: I tried researching the specific cause of white lion leucism (it comes from a mutation for tyrosinase) but very little is known about it exactly, though, I gleaned something just by using the oldest tool in the zoology briefcase, me own eyes.

Notice a difference between Kimba and EVERY image of a white lion I've provided? Here, have some more white lion.

(Look at 'em all!)

From male to female, newborn, to cub, to adult, one consistency that Kimba does not share, maybe you already noticed and want me to get to the fucking point, maybe I will, maybe I won't, okay, I will.

(Circles denoting where Kimba posseses the trait, 'x's denoting where the real lion cub does not)

Black fur, Kimba has black fur on the tips of his ears and tail, no image of a real life white lion that I've seen has that pattern, or ANY black fur (wait, did I just retread my point about amelanism? Damn), and I'm lead to believe that does not occur amongst real life white lions, so then...

Kimba is a an anomaly

(From top left to bottom right Kimba's aunt (1989) Kimba's father (2009) and Kimba's father (1989)

In the 2009 version the only white lions we see are Kimba and his dad, and his dad lacks the black fur, in the 1989 series the only white lions we see are Kimba, his dad and aunt, both of the latter lack the black fur, but Kimba retains it in all versions.

Perhaps the cause of white lions is the same as real life white lions, and Kimba is a very rare anomaly within an anomaly, I don't know a whole lot about genetics, but that sounds reasonable enough for KTWL standards.

Buuuuuut, every other version, including the manga that started it all has other white lions retain the same color palette, and even show dozens of white lion ancestors, and a DISTANT white lion ancestor who all have the same palette, so, this anomaly theory is ironically only relevent to anomalies, the 1989 series and 2009 movie, what about for the whole franchise, well...

I don't know

Here's where I'd like to pull something out my hat and save the day with the obvious and true answer... but, there isn't one, at least, not one I found, sooooo, yeah, everyone must come to their own conclusion, maybe you even disagree with some of my reasoning and come to a conclusuon I've disregarded!

I'd love to hear your take away, and what comes next is merely my own personal take.

I don't know (good ending)

i don't know, and that's the point, I like that conclusion, the Kimba franchise contains mystisms, but never delves into them, leaving them as strange mysteries, it is a story about the exotic, it is ever out of reach.

I choose to believe white lions are semi-magical, thus why Kimba's lineage is the ONLY white lions we see in a franchise that stretches from 1950 to 2009, with over a hundred episodes, thus why white lions seem to always produce a white lion cub, but usually only ONE white lion cub, and the rest resemble the mother, because it works by magic rules.

In the 1989 version(and possibly others) Kimba is directly or indirectly likened to the supernatural, the Great Mother, a huge mammoth who can summon powerful snow storms in tropical Africa treats Kimba as such.

Simply, it can't be explained IRL, that's pretty cool, not everything needs to be explained, and MAGIC!

Thanks for sticking around through my insanity, hope you learned something and had fun, I did!

(Normally I'd put a pic riiight here to close things off but I hit the Tumblr image limit, didn't even know they had one)

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