White Lions

Field guide

Why are white lions white?

White lions are not albinos and they are not a separate species of lion. Their pale coat comes from a naturally occurring recessive genetic trait, a form of leucism, that reduces the pigment in the fur. It is a color variation within the same species as every other African lion.

The difference from an albino animal is easy to see. An albino has no pigment anywhere and usually has pink or red eyes. A white lion keeps color in its eyes, nose, lips and paw pads; their eyes range from gold to blue.

Because the trait is recessive, a cub has to inherit a copy of the gene from both parents to be born white. Two normally colored, tawny lions can each carry a hidden copy and never show it, and together they can produce a white cub. That is why a white cub can appear in an ordinary pride and then not be seen again for generations. The odds of a lion being born white are very small, but it is a natural event, not a human creation.

Lionesses share the nursery. Mothers in a pride often raise their cubs together, and a lioness will nurse cubs that aren’t her own. Researchers Anne Pusey and Craig Packer found she shares the most milk with cubs of close relatives.

Source: Pusey & Packer (1994), Behavioral Ecology.

Kimba as a cub at Plumpton Park Zoo. Note the dark nose and colored eyes, pigment an albino would lack.

Kimba and Jaala resting side by side.

Legend to science

White lions: once thought to be a myth

For generations, reports of white lions were often regarded outside southern Africa as legend or myth, in the same category as a unicorn or Bigfoot. Safari parties had been looking for white lions since the early 1800s, and their failure to bring back proof helped cement the idea that the stories were folklore. The fanciful nature of some of those stories may have added to that belief: in one telling, white lions were children of the Sun God, sent to earth to bring peace.

Stories of white lions existed in southern Africa long before science documented them. For much of the 20th century the wider world still treated them as myth. Reports from local people in the late 1920s did little to change that, and it was not until the 1970s, when photographs of white lions were published, that their existence became widely accepted.

White lions are now known to occur naturally in a very small area of Africa, in and around the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve on the western edge of Kruger National Park. The name “Timbavati” is often explained locally as referring to something sacred that came down from the heavens, a reference to the rare white lions of the region.

At a glance

White lion fast facts

The genetics

How a white cub is born

At one time it was thought there were as many as eleven separate species of lions. Only two subspecies are recognized today, Panthera leo leo and Panthera leo melanochaita. White lions belong to the second.

Spot the difference

White lion or something else?

Conservation

White lions and conservation

VULNERABLE

African lions as a whole are classified as Vulnerable. Their range has shrunk sharply over the last century. The pressures are habitat loss as land is converted to farms and settlements, loss of the wild prey lions depend on, and conflict with people and livestock, which often ends with a lion being killed. A white lion in the wild faces all of these and is rarer still.

For lions in professional human care, responsible genetic and population management matters. Because the white coat is a recessive trait, breeding specifically for that appearance can narrow genetic diversity if too much emphasis is placed on a limited number of carriers. Responsible population management therefore considers overall genetic diversity, health and long-term sustainability rather than selecting animals solely for coat color.

Plumpton Park Zoo has begun conservation efforts for lions in cooperation with several other zoological facilities, and we are proud to help with the education and preservation of this vulnerable species.

In the traditions of communities around Timbavati, white lions have been regarded as sacred, a gift from the heavens, and that view is still held by many local people today. Those beliefs are part of the region’s culture and deserve respect on their own terms; they are not scientific evidence. What they do show is that people who shared the land with these lions knew about them long before the first photograph reached the outside world.