Can you still call seeing two albino deer together a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
If you are ever out in nature and you see an albino deer – or an albino animal (complete loss of pigmentation) of any kind for that matter – consider yourself lucky. If you’re ever outside and you happen to see two albino deer together, you might just be one of the luckiest people on the planet.
Kurt Massimilla, an Iowa native that resides in the northeast portion of the state, was driving home with his family when he spotted a cluster of deer in the woods just off the road. At first, the family in the car wasn’t sure if they could believe their eyes. But as they got closer, they confirmed that they were in the presence of not one – but two – albino deer.
As Massimilla told SWNS:
“I saw it, and I thought it was like a white llama or something like that. My wife was like, ‘Oh my god, an albino deer,’ and just the tone in her voice… she was like a giddy teenager.”
The odds of witnessing one of nature’s beautiful mistakes are slim to none. It’s one of those situations where if you see an albino animal, you go and buy a lottery ticket right after (though you kind of already won the lottery seeing the rare creature in person).
Of course, at this distance, it’s unclear if the two deer are true albinos.
Leucistic mammals, which is a partial loss of pigmentation that usually results in white fur but regular eyes and hooves, are slightly more common, but it’s estimated that only one in every 30,000 deer that are born are albino. For clarification, those aren’t very good odds, and one could argue that the odds of catching a glimpse of one only get slimmer and slimmer the older the deer gets. Obviously, an all white deer is going to stick out like a sore thumb in the grassy habitats that they usually call home, which makes them more prone to being attacked.
Which is a real shame, because that just means that the albino deer is fighting against the odds for its entire life. Before they are even born, a “perfect storm” of parents is needed to create the all white deer. Albinism is a recessive genetic trait (having flashbacks to biology class?), meaning that both parents of the albino offspring must carry the trait. In the rare case that the pair both have the non-dominant trait, they can then pass it down to their baby and cause it to have a lack in hair, tissue and skin coloration.
As I stated earlier, an albino deer’s color alone leave them with tough odds for survival, and that’s before you add in that deer that are born with albinism often also have physical deformities and abnormalities. Spine issues, as well as shortened legs and deformed hooves, attribute to the typical short lifespan of albino deer. The only real thing these white deer have going for them is Native Americans believed they were magical beasts and you’d bring yourself bad luck if you killed one.
And there truly is a magical aura about them, as you can see in this video below. The Iowa family that just so happened to be driving by in the right place at the right time slowed their car down to get a video of the pair of beautiful albino deer. The family’s reaction is also comical, with the father stating he had no idea that albino deer were a thing, and one of the children in the back freaking out because they couldn’t spot the rare animals.
Check it out:
