Extremely Rare White Cougar Highlights A Quirk Of The Species

Scientists have yet to figure it out why color-changing genes are so rare among these animals. My best guess is that the distant ancestor of pumas was uniformly colored, and that has been maintained in the species ever since. But that's just a consequence of the randomness of mutation, the roll of the genetic dice, Hunter told National Geographic. Even though leucism is pretty common among wild cats, for unknown reasons, it's almost unheard of in cougars.