A snow white raccoon made a stir on social media this month when it was spotted munching a cat’s dinner on a South Florida porch.
The handsy mammal could be a very rare albino raccoon or have a genetic mutation that limits its production of melanin, which would make it leucistic.
Either way, it was unusual enough to generate a 105-message discussion that alternately congratulated the cat owner on seeing the pale marauder and scolded her for leaving out pet food for it to snack on.
“Remarkable!” one person posted. “Creepy,” another noted. And simply “beautiful” read one post.
There were also links to other videos reportedly taken in Palm Beach County of four cotton-colored raccoons romping in a backyard.
“It is rare but not unheard of,” said Busch
Wildlife Sanctuary Chief Executive Officer Amy Kight about the white raccoon. “We’ve had a couple in my 22-year career with Busch Wildlife.”
One of the Jupiter facility’s residents was an albino raccoon named Casper, Kight said.
According to AZ Animals, the odds of spotting a true albino raccoon in the wild are 1 in 175,000 and that most white raccoons are really leucistic, retaining some darker pigment.
In February, a lifelong angler off the coast of Jupiter caught a pure white sandbar shark. He took videos of reeling it in and releasing it. Experts debated whether it was albino or leucistic with most leaning toward leucistic.
“He stuck out like a sore thumb,” said angler Bob Rohmann about the shark. “I was like, ‘Holy s---, that’s an albino shark!’”
In 2020,four albino alligators were born at Wild Florida in Kenansville, near Melbourne. The drive-thru safari and alligator park said it was the the first attraction in the world at the time to successfully breed albino alligators.
The Palm Beach Zoo and Conservation Societyhas a leucisticalligator named Mardi. He began living at the zoo in 2007 after he was found in Louisiana.
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for the USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA. She covers weather, the environment and critters as the Embracing Florida reporter. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY, at palmbeachpost.com/newsletters.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Ghostly raccoon in Florida raids cat's dinner and steals the Internet
