White-coated creature stuns photographer looking for birds in NC. See ‘rare’ find
A wildlife photographer was looking for birds — then stumbled upon a “rare” creature.
“Our staff photographer recently went out to get some bird photos, but was shocked to see a leucistic white deer in the wild,” the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission wrote Aug. 12 in a Facebook post.
A photo from the Durham County excursion shows the female deer with white fur coating its back and neck. The deer has leucism, a partial loss of pigment due to genetics.
“We don’t have an estimate of leucistic deer in NC,” April Boggs Pope, deer biologist for the commission, told McClatchy News via email. “But leucism in the white-tailed deer population is rare, similar to albinism, with estimates of less than 1%.”
While the photographer’s find was unusual, it wasn’t the first sighting of a “snow-white” deer in the state. At least two deer suspected to have leucism were spotted on the property of the N.C. Zoo in Asheboro, McClatchy News reported.
After one of the creatures made its “stunning debut” in spring 2024, the wildlife park said another one of the “elusive” animals was spotted in December. Zoo workers also reported seeing a white fawn in July but didn’t didn’t respond to McClatchy News’ requests for more information about what caused that deer’s fur to be white.
Experts believe leucism impacts about 1 in 1,000 white-tailed deer babies. The condition causes animals to have patches of white skin or fur but doesn’t affect eye pigment in the way albinism does, according to the zoo and the National Park Service.
“Being albino or leucistic isn’t an advantage in the wild, and they tend not to survive for long,” the wildlife commission wrote. “Their eyes and skin lack melanin pigment that protects against sun damage, and they’re highly visible to predators. In cities and suburbs though, albino or leucistic deer have some advantage due to lack of predators and a high-visibility pelt that may help motorists avoid them.”
