A Star is born
Well, a WNBA one at least. Earlier this month, a white bison was spotted in Yellowstone National Park. The animal anomaly has created quite the buzz after it was photographed by a visitor and shared with park rangers. The picture depicting the fuzzy youngster being nuzzled by its assumed dark brown mother would normally just be a nice photo, but nothing noteworthy, as there are over 5,000 bison in the park. However, this one was a white.
White bison can occur in a few different ways, as explained in the AP article. First, albinism, which we are all familiar with from the 1995 film "Powder" (although the abilities of the main character may be slightly exaggerated, as albinos are not known to cause lights to explode). The next is leucism, which is when an animal inherits two copies of a gene mutation - one from each parent - that cause the animal to lack some cells that produce melanin. The last and most likely is a 'got milk' scenario, with a light-colored calf mating with a white domestic cow. If that is the case, the white domestic cow will likely not go back.
There are no certain statistics around white bison, as it is so uncommon it has never been tracked. But based on the anger of local farmers throughout the years, we can suspect it happens more than we think. We eagerly await disparaging remarks from Diana Taurasi about the white bison's popularity.