Sunday, October 20, 2019

Indoraptor pigmentation thoughts

Outside of Jurassic World Evolution's AU, how much is there to go on regarding how well the Indoraptor prototype actually represents what would be usual for his species? In terms of colouring, this time.

In a scrapped storyline for Fallen Kingdom, there were going to be two Indoraptors, one of them white. Probably just for visual contrast, but considering the Indominus rex, of which the Indoraptor prototype(s) is a modified clone, is also white, well, maybe Indoraptors and Indominus rexes usually are, and he's just an individual with melanism? Or abundism - a pigmentation variant where an animal's dark markings are very enlargened, resulting in a similar appearance to an animal with melanism, or what looks like partial melanism. The Indominus rex, despite being white with red eyes, is not an albino individual, at least, since she can make herself different colours.

Maybe without the condition the Indoraptor prototype would have had dark horizontal stripes or rows of spots on most of him, and the yellow-gold stripe and the red markings at the corners of his eyes aren't fully covered because there's bigger gaps between dark markings there for brighter display colour markings, while his base colour is something plainer. The JP3 raptors have darker markings in horizontal rows and stripes on a lighter base, on the females at least, while the males have that one brighter stripe along each flank, so that could be where the patterning comes from.

Or that might not be the case, and what we see in the movie is a colouring typical to Indoraptors, but it's fun to wonder about how different Indoraptor individuals might look other than changing the stripe's colour.

No comments: