A BEAUTIFUL extremely rare white erythristic badger has been rescued after being found dehydrated and underweight due to the recent hot weather.
Animal welfare charity Oxfordshire Wildlife Rescue (OWR) have fondly named the young erythristic badger Elsa after she was handed in on Friday.
White badgers are incredibly uncommon and are often confused with albino badgers.
They are almost never spotted, with organisations unable to give a true statistic as to how rare they are due to the lack of sightings of them.
All-white badgers have no pigmentation and usually have reddish brown fur where the black is.
However, Elsa – named after the main character from Disney’s Frozen – has surprised animal welfare workers due to being completely white across her fur.
Founder of OWR, Luke Waclawek, today said: “They are incredibly rare, in my eight years of doing this I’ve only seen one, and it’s this one.
“She’s an erythristic badger, which just means she’s totally white. There’s nothing wrong with her, it’s just a genetic mutation.
“She came in dehydrated, so we’ve had her on fluids and de-wormer and she’s doing really well.”
OWR posted images of Elsa, who is believed to be around 16 weeks old, on Facebook on Friday, writing: “This beautiful but incredibly rare creature is…a white badger.
“She is not an albino but she is an ‘erythristic’ badger. These badgers have no pigmentation and instead have reddish brown fur where the black usually is. This is caused by a genetic mutation.”
The post attracted almost 600 likes and dozens of comments from animal lovers who were shocked by the animal.
One said: “No idea a white badger was even possible!”
Another wrote: “Really beautiful creature, glad she’s being well looked after.”
A third commented: “Wow she is gorgeous.”
White-furred badgers can be either albino, usually spotted through the combination of white fur and red eyes, leucistic, with white fur, brown noses and brown eyes, or in Elsa’s case, erythristic.
Usually, badgers that share the condition that Elsa has have some degree of pinkish colouration to their fur – making her all-white case particularly special.
Elsa is due to be released back into the wild when she is well enough.
