When wildlife photographer Dennis Jackson set out on a peaceful fishing trip with a friend in Ontario, Canada, he expected a quiet morning on the water — not the kind of sighting that would leave him speechless.
“I look across the bay and I see something white swimming in the water,” Jackson told The Dodo. “And I’m like, ‘What the heck is that?’”
From a distance, the strange white shape moved slowly through the marsh. Jackson ran through every possibility — a swan? Too small. A seagull? The wrong shape. As their boat drew closer, the truth sent chills down his spine.
“It was a beaver … with white fur,” he said. “We had shivers run down our spine because it’s just something you don’t ever think you’re going to see.”
Though Jackson is an experienced wildlife photographer, he hadn’t brought his cameras that day — just his fishing gear and his phone. Still, he managed to snap a few photos of the rare sight before the beaver swam off into the reeds.
Determined to properly document the encounter, Jackson returned to the same spot a few days later — this time, fully equipped. To his amazement, the white beaver was still there, paddling calmly through the water.
“It swam toward us, and then it swam the other direction, and it was just all around,” he said. “We were just excited.”
Jackson filmed and photographed the animal as it went about its business, noting that its color didn’t seem to bother the other beavers or affect its behavior at all.
Curious about what caused the rare coloring, Jackson reached out to Canadian naturalist Michael Runtz, who examined the photos. Runtz concluded that the beaver wasn’t albino — but leucistic, meaning it had a partial loss of pigmentation.
“[Runtz] said that in all his years as a professor at Carleton University, he’s never seen a white animal that large,” Jackson said.
That revelation made the sighting even more extraordinary. Jackson has since chosen not to reveal the exact location of the marsh to protect the beaver’s safety, knowing how vulnerable such a rare animal could be if word spread.
In Ontario, beavers are a familiar sight — but for Jackson, this one changed everything.
“It kind of inspired me to be more curious,” he said.
To follow more of Dennis Jackson’s wildlife adventures, you can find him on Instagram or Facebook.
