A white buffalo or white bison is an American bison possessing white fur, and is considered sacred or spiritually significant in several Native American religions; therefore, such buffalo are often visited for prayer and other religious rituals. The coats of buffalo are almost always brown and their skin a dark brown or black; however, white buffalo can result from one of several physical conditions:
- They may be albinos, in which case they will remain unpigmented throughout their lives, and may also have hearing and vision problems.
- They may be leucistic, with white fur but blue eyes, instead of the pink seen in albinos.
- They may have a rare genetic condition which causes a buffalo to be born white, but to become brown within a year or two as it matures.
- They may be beefalo, a bison–cattle crossbreed, and thus have inherited the white coloration from their cattle ancestry.
White buffalo are extremely rare; the National Bison Association has estimated that they only occur in approximately one out of every 10 million births.
Read more about White Buffalo: Individual White Buffalo, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words white and/or buffalo:
“Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)
“As I started with her out of the city warmly enveloped in buffalo furs, I could not but think how nice it would be to drive on and on, so that nobody should ever catch us.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)