Coloration in wildlife serves numerous biological purposes, including sexual selection signaling, thermoregulation, and camouflage. However, the physical appearance of wildlife also influences the ways in which humans interact with them. Wildlife conservation has largely revolved around humans’ propensity to favor charismatic megafauna, but human perceptions of wildlife species extend beyond conservation measures into our everyday interactions with individual wildlife. Our aesthetic appreciation for different species interplays with culture, lore, and the economic interest they carry. As such, one characteristic that may underpin and interact with social drivers of perception is the coloration of a particular individual. We provide case studies illustrating the dynamism in interactions people have with conspicuously colored wildlife – i.e., individuals that vary from their species-typical coloration. We focus on melanism, leucism, and albinism across four species commonly thought of as pests in the United States: coyotes (Canis latrans), eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and black-tailed deer (O. hemionus).

野生动物的体色有多种生物学用途，包括性选择信号、体温调节和伪装。然而，野生动物的外表也会影响人类与它们互动的方式。野生动物保护在很大程度上围绕着人类对有魅力的巨型动物的倾向，但人类对野生动物物种的看法超出了保护措施，延伸到了我们与野生动物个体的日常互动。我们对不同物种的审美欣赏与它们所承载的文化、传说和经济利益相互作用。因此，可能支撑感知的社会驱动因素并与之相互作用的一个特征是特定个体的肤色。我们提供的案例研究说明了人们与颜色明显的野生动物（即与物种典型颜色不同的个体）互动的动态。我们重点关注美国常见的四种害虫物种的黑变病、白化病和白化病：郊狼 ( Canis latrans )、东部灰松鼠 ( Sciurus carolinensis )、白尾鹿 ( Odocoileus virginianus)和黑尾鹿（O. hemionus）。