An Italian farmer welcomed a litter of five dogs earlier this month — and one of the pups stood out among the rest. Cristian Mallocci couldn’t believe his eyes when one of them was born with green fur, Reuters reports.
Written content by WKRC
PATTADA, Italy (Reuters/CBS Newspath/WKRC) – Have you ever seen a green dog before, or thought they even existed? Well, it seems they do.
Sardinian dog owners got a surprise when a new litter of puppies were born and one of them had green fur.
No bets on the name though. Of course they called him Pistachio.
Farmer Cristian Mallocci couldn’t believe his eyes when Spelacchia (Italian for ‘mangy’), one of his eight farm dogs, gave birth to a tiny green puppy on Oct. 9.
There’s no doubt that Pistachio is the special one out of his four brothers and sisters, who were all born with white fur, the same colour as their mixed breed mother.
t is extremely rare for a dog to be born with green-coloured fur. It is thought that it happens when pale coloured puppies have contact in the womb with a green pigment called biliverdin that dyes their hair while in their mother’s tummy.
Biliverdin is the same pigment that causes the green color in bruises.
Pistachio was bright green on the day of his birth, but the color has slowly faded day by day, and will continue to do so as he gets older.
Mallocci owns his farm in Pattada, a small village on the Italian island of Sardinia, with his brother-in-law Giannangelo Liperi.
While his brothers and sisters will be given away to new homes when they’re old enough to separate from the mother, the owners will keep Pistachio on their farm and train him up to look after the sheep with his mother.
They now fondly know him as Pistachio, their little star. Read more from WKRC.
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