27 October 2023 , 09:00
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An Albino squirrel has been captured playing around in a UK woodland in an extremely rare sighting.
The white squirrel was recently pictured nestled among leaves near Leeds Castle. Spotting the rodent has become a phenomenon due to the odds of finding one in the UK.
Another sighting was recently documented in Caerphilly, Wales, after a woman noticed the creature leaping from a roof onto a wall in her garden. Emily Paynter called her husband after the shock discovery. She said the daredevil caught locals attention as her neighbours watched it sit on the wall for around two hours.
The squirrel was caught on camera by Leeds Castle (Jam Press Vid/Andy Green)"The squirrel had run across our next-door neighbour’s garage roof and then jumped on the wall," she told BBC. "We usually have squirrels in our back garden and usually they get quite spooked easily but it didn’t. It stayed on the wall for a while. We were getting really excited and I even video-called my mother to show her."
Albino squirrels have a genetic condition called albinism, which results in a lack of melanin, the pigment responsible for skin, hair, and eye colour in animals, including humans. As a result, albino squirrels have white fur and pink or red eyes due to the absence of pigment. Because of their unique appearance, albino squirrels are often considered a novelty and can be of interest to wildlife enthusiasts and photographers. Their lack of protective pigmentation makes them more vulnerable to predators, and they may have reduced vision due to their pink or red eyes.
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Various sources suggest there are only one in 100,000 in the UK which would make this a photo of perhaps only 24 individuals in the UK based on a Grey Squirrel population of 2.5million. However, Claire Brimacombe, from Pevensey, claims there are more squirrels in the UK than scientists think. She launched a website called 'White Squirrels of Sussex and the UK' to document sightings after she spotted one in the village of Alfriston, East Sussex, in 2018. “I thought ‘What the hell is that?’ and started Googling," she told The Argus.
Claire spent months logging the evidence of more than 100 white squirrel sightings. She added: “There are about three million grey squirrels in the UK, so there should be about 30 in the country. “But I’ve got more than 100 sightings. Either the scientists have got their ratio wrong or something extremely rare is happening here.”