Audubon Zoo

Audubon Zoo's guide in New Orleans opens with a puzzle: a white alligator has no camouflage in muddy bayou water, so almost every one ever spotted in the wild vanishes within weeks of hatching. In the late 1980s one clutch of wild eggs hatched ghost white anyway, and wildlife officials realized the hatchlings could not survive back in open water, so they were brought here as among the first leucistic alligators ever raised to adulthood. You'll hear how leucism differs from albinism, how rare the condition is worldwide, and how Cajun folklore folded the white gators into stories of bayou spirits and luck. Look for the one raised here since those early days.