An uncommon white giraffe has been spotted and captured in Tanzania. It was first seen last year in Tanzania's Tarangire National Park. In a blog post, Wild Nature Institute (WNI) wrote that the giraffe was dubbed as ‘Omo’ after a famous brand of detergent in the region.

In an email to CBS News, Derek Lee, PhD, WNI's principal scientist, mentioned that the discovery was quite rare, and was just the second record of a white giraffe in Tarangire in the last 2 decades or so, among over 3,000 giraffes in the region.

WNI Wildlife watchers said that Omo has got her strange coloration because her body surface cells can’t make pigment, but that doesn’t mean she is albino. Instead she is leucistic, wherein some or all of the pigment cells can’t develop.

Last year, in a blog post regarding Omo, the institute explained that one way through which albino and leucistic animals can be distinguished is that albino creatures lack melanin everywhere, like in their eyes, due to which these animals have red eyes from their blood vessels. That isn’t seemed to be the case of Omo.

Lee wrote that they were thrilled to find the giraffe alive and well. Lee added, “About half of all giraffe calves are killed during first year by lions, hyenas, and leopards. It is illegal to kill giraffes in Tanzania, as it is national animal, but illegal market hunting for meat is well known to be rampant around Tarangire”.

Furthermore, Lee said that sadly all giraffes, not only the white ones such as Omo, are in danger of bushmeat poaching. Luckily, Omo is living in a national park, where she has the highest survival possibility thanks to the area’s anti-poaching efforts.