This video shows a red squirrel feeding on nuts in a garden in the Netherlands.
Err … ‘red’ squirrel … this individual is white.
Theo van Mullekom made this video.
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It doesn’t seem to have red eyes, so does that rule out ‘albino’? And does ‘leucisitic’ apply to animals or just birds? Very beautiful, anyway. RH (PS it would look good next to an all-black one, like the ones in Central Park NYC)
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Leucism happens in mammals as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucism
The squirrels in New York probably are not European red squirrels?
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This video says about itself:
Black Squirrels in Quebec, Ontario, and New York
Black squirrels are a black-pigmented variant of the eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). The inheritance scheme is: one black gene equals black-brown fur, while two black genes (alleles on both chromosomes) will result in jet black fur. It is said that North America once had far more black squirrels prior to industrialization due to the thickness of old-growth forests, an environment in which black fur offered more concealment from predators than grey fur; today, many of the forests in the United States of America have been harvested for wood and disrupted by human activity, providing an advantage for grey fur. In Canada, more black ones are found than in the U.S.A, perhaps due to the heat retention properties of black fur over grey fur, plus the fact that Canada has much more undisturbed dense old-growth forest than the U.S.A. does.
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It looks very small and young. I have never seen a fully white/red squirrel before.
Hmm. I have a written piece about being mugged by a squirrel–true story. I wonder how that squirrel and this one would get along.
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In the video you don’t see the white squirrel with other squirrels, so it is a bit hard to tell its exact age or size.
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