CHICAGO — If black squirrels are ultra rare in Chicago, white squirrel sightings are almost unheard of.
But Shane Jones photographed a white squirrel recently in Norwood Park. The white squirrel was hanging out on a willow tree.
White squirrels, like their black squirrel counterparts, are mostly mutations of the far-more-common gray squirrel, which number in the hundreds of thousands in Chicago. Some white squirrels are also albinos.
Jones said he also spotted a black squirrel in Chicago this year.
"I couldn't believe I saw a white and black squirrel for the first time, in the same year," he said.
Joel Brown, an UIC distinguished professor of biology and founder of Project Squirrel — a citizen-based science project that allows individuals to track and observe squirrels in their backyards and elsewhere throughout the country — said white squirrels are almost nonexistent in Chicago.
In the 20-plus years since founding Project Squirrel, he's seen one white squirrel in Chicago and received about five reports of sightings. Brown said natural selection weeds out the white squirrels, which stand out even more than black squirrels to predators, keeping their numbers in Chicago almost zero.
There are some larger white squirrel populations in the United States, including in Downstate Olney and Oberlin (Ohio) College. Oberlin's mascot is an albino squirrel.
"There are places that pride themselves with helping to maintain white squirrel populations," Brown said.
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Brown said about 1 in every 10,000 squirrels in Chicago is black, which he noted have a much better chance of surviving than white squirrels.
"Black squirrels have a higher likelihood of surviving than whites because they are more camouflaged and less susceptible to sun damage," said Steve Sullivan, one of Brown's students and the co-director of Project Squirrel.
Squirrels live about two years, Brown said.
The most common places to find black squirrels in the city are the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park, the Loyola of Chicago campus in Rogers Park/Edgewater and Welles Park in North Center/Lincoln Square. There are a few of the black squirrels at UIC and in Norwood Park, Brown said.
After a DNAinfo reported on black squirrels in the city, hundreds of readers mentioned on Neighborhood Square and Facebook they had seen them in several other neighborhoods around Chicago. Two others, including Jones, said they saw white squirrels, with Jones sending in photos.
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