How can a mutation affecting skin be harmful to an animal?

Answer 1

Mutations can affect many things, especially in the animal kingdom where differences that make an animal stand out tend to make it more vulnerable, particularly if the animal is a prey item to predators.

Let's take albinism for example. Albinism is not a mutation of the skin but rather of the cells that cause the pigmentation of skin, hair, and the iris of the eye. Keeping that in mind, it's also a relatively easy example to use so let's pretend for a moment that it is a skin mutation, just for this example.

Animals that are fully albino have none of the normal skin pigmentation that a normally colored animal has. To you and I this means that the animals sticks out from others of the same species and, in many cases, we find albino animals quite beautiful. Now let's look at this from the perspective of a predator. Most animals have the coloration that they have to blend in with their surroundings more easily or to confuse potential predators. If we use a Thompson's Gazelle as an example, most Thompson's Gazelle are varying shades of brown and tan with a little bit of white. If one of the members of the herd is an albino, in comparison to the other members of it's herd, it is going to stick out like a sore thumb to a predator because it's white coloration makes it very easy to distinguish. Another example is the zebra. Zebras use their stripes to confuse predators. If we were to put an albino zebra in a herd of black and white zebras, that zebra doesn't have the distinctive black stripes and thus is much more easy to spot than it's black and white herd mates, thus allowing predators to zone in on it more easily.

A skin mutation could also affect mating. In some species of birds for instance, females are very particular about which male they breed with. They want their offspring to have a fighting chance and thus want to breed with a strong male. If he has a skin mutation that causes him to look or behave differently than other males, it may cause him to lose potential mates because they take his differences as a sign of weakness. This means that he is not able to pass on his genes to the next generation, which in turn, reduces the gene pool.

There are many other reasons a skin mutation could be harmful to an animal; these are just a few.