Pictured: The rare 'albino' foal that's become a star of the New Forest

Rusty · #1 06-01-2008, 07:35 PM

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:26 AM on 31st May 2008

It's one of the rarest sights in the equine world.
A pure white horse is hardly ever seen outside a pub sign.
And almost all of them have begun life as a darker color before turning to light grey.

This white foal has been drawing crowds to a national park in Hampshire

So crowds have been flocking to catch a glimpse of this beautiful foal, born among a group of New Forest ponies near Lyndhurst, Hampshire.
The spindly-legged youngster - also pictured, inset, with his dun-coloured mother - has quickly become the star attraction in Britain's newest national park.

The fact the foal has a brown mother proves that he is a cremello blue-eyed cream and not an albino

The rare cremello foal takes some tentative steps

The snowy star nuzzles up to its chestnut-colored mom

The enthusiasts who first spotted him thought he could be an albino, but experts have now ruled that out.

They say the giveaway is his eyes, which are blue. An albino's would be pink.
The technical term for the colt is a cremello blue-eyed cream. As well as their blue eyes, such animals have some pale golden pigment in their coats and skin. Albinos have no non-white coloring at all.

Sue Westwood, clerk to the Verderers, the group which protects and conserves landscape and wildlife of the New Forest, said: 'It is virtually unheard of in horses to have an albino and cremellos are very unusual.

'Unfortunately, they are not very hardy at all. They find it hard to deal with sunburn in the summer and with the cold rain in the winter.' The sensitivity to light may explain why the foal's eyes are half-closed. Or he could just be trying to look relaxed in the face of all the attention.