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:
“With sweetest milk, and sugar, first
I it as mine own fingers nurst.
And as it grew, so every day
It wax’d more white and sweet than they.
It had so sweet a Breath!”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“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)