Albino rabbit

[David Riddell]

Truly albino (as opposed to leucistic) animals don't tend to last very long in the wild, but an albino rabbit has been hanging around my brother's place (Gordonton, Waikato) for the last couple of weeks. It's still very young, so will be interesting to see if it gets much older. Lots of rabbits around at the moment, the dry conditions in the last year seem to suit them. You can usually see two or three at a time from my brother's garden. Have also seen a couple of black rabbits recently, but they're a lot more common.

[Raewyn]

Is it someone's pet? A lot of domestic rabbits are albino. If a pet it probably won't have enough survival skills to last very long.

[David Riddell]

I don't think it's a pet. It's running around with the wild rabbits, of which there are a great many. It's out in the country, so no houses nearby where a pet might easily come from. There are burrows under the chicken shed, along the fencelines, and out in the paddock, never seen so many rabbits around here as there are this year. At least a couple of black rabbits at my brother's place, and another behind the house here, about a mile away.

[David Riddell]

Just heard from my sister-in-law that their Rottweiler has caught the white rabbit. Probably the only surprise was that it lasted this long.

[sav]

Hi David,

Many years ago I visited Fair Isle, in Shetland, where there are lots of rabbits - and some with different colours. I certainly recall seeing black ones and one which was "ginger".

The explanation at the time was that they had no natural predators and so these mutants survived better than they would in a more normal environment. I was told that the presence of the odd-coloured animals in nature was called altruism.

cheers