by the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife 

Do our eyes deceive us? Or could it really be (Yes! It really is!) a pure white whistlepig?

The photo above is from a video shared by S. Collum of Washington County 0to the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife. You can see the whole video on Facebook.

Look at it go! Even for a more typical looking woodchuck, life is pretty tough and it pays to be able to book it. As Vermont’s native marmot (genus Marmota), woodchucks go by many names and are lunch for many predators. Called “groundhogs,” “land beavers,” and of course “whistlepigs” around these parts, woodchucks are usually a reddish brown color that helps them stay hidden from predators like foxes, bobcats, coyotes, owls and hawks. 

This one, as you’ve probably noticed, stands out a little. It’s pure white fur could be due to one of two conditions: albinism or leucism. 

True albino animals lack the ability to produce an important pigment for darker colors, called melanin, in all their cells. They’re usually entirely white with pink eyes and other soft tissues. Leucism is the lack of melanin in only some cells, so you’ll still get some other colors on parts of the animal. This woodchuck is probably leucistic since even though its coat is pure white, the eyes and nose appear to be the normal dark brown for the species.

It’s pretty unusual to see albino or leucistic prey animals like woodchucks, because this pale color makes them very easy marks for hungry predators.