“When your species is supposed to be a certain color, being white or lighter isn’t going to help you a whole lot,” said Kimberlee Beckmen, a wildlife veterinarian at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “This lighter color is a bad thing for a moose. Natural selection selects against it because it either means they’re less healthy or they have a greater chance of being preyed upon.”

Beckmen said that without an up-close examination, it’s difficult to say why this moose was born with sandy-looking fur instead of the typical dark color that allows the species to blend within its lush forest habitat and protect itself from hungry wolves and bears. However, the moose’s coloring could be the product of a nutritional deficiency while in utero or of a genetic condition called leucism — the partial loss of pigmentation.

While leucistic creatures don’t have the same red or pink eyes as albinos, they also end up with lighter-colored features. In humans, leucism typically manifests itself in patches of white hair and lighter skin, Beckmen said. And in the mythical world, the platinum tresses that characterized the Targaryen family in “Game of Thrones” could be a fictional example of the genetic mutation, she said.

Beckmen said the effects on an animal could range from deafness to a shorter life span to a likelier chance of becoming a predator’s snack. “These animals are a lot more likely to die young or to get killed — I mean, there’s a reason why they are so rare.”

Though unusual, leucism in moose isn’t unheard of. For instance, in Sweden, a “majestic” milky moose was seen swimming in a stream in 2017. In Canada, residents were brokenhearted when a white cow — deemed a “spirit moose” — was killed in 2020. And in Alaska, a state with approximately 200,000 moose, sightings of marshmallow-hued creatures pop up every so often, said Mike Taras, a wildlife education and outreach specialist at the fish and game agency.

“In the past 20 years, I’ve heard of at least three,” Taras said. “But you have to consider that our state is very, incredibly large and has very remote areas. So our chance of seeing everything is not very high. There could be more out there.”

Taras said he wasn’t expecting Big Blondie’s photo to get quite so much attention. Perhaps, he said, “it’s a combination of its unique color and the fact that maybe other people around the country aren’t used to seeing moose as we are around here.”

But for Lee Kantar, who surveys between 800 to 1,000 moose each year as the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s moose biologist, it’s a “pretty neat thing” to see the giant animals gain some recognition.

Moose — which can be found across the northern forests of North America and Europe — are “fascinating animals,” Kantar said. They fiercely protect their kin, survive harsh winters, serve as a food source for people and drum up tourism during hunting season. But mostly, they try to live out “their best moose life each year,” he said.

“A moose’s life is eating as much as you can when there’s green stuff outside. Then follows the breeding season. Then, it’s spending time laying low until spring comes around. It doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but it could be a dream life for some,” Kantar said.

Though evolutionary odds are stacked against him, he added, hopefully the rare blond moose is able to experience some of it.