Driver 'shaking' after encounter with super-rare albino echidna

She had noticed something blending into the white road markings in front of her.

"It was smack bang in the middle of the road ... it caught my eye because the line wasn't quite straight," she said.

"Then I saw it and I thought it was a cat at first, but then he just put his nose up and I kind of freaked out because I didn't really know what it was."

Ms Silcock soon realised she was stopped in front of a super-rare white echidna - an animal born with the gene mutation that alters pigmentation from the usual black or brown colour.

"I got out and realised what it was, and I was like shaking, because I was so excited, I've never seen one before.

"I knew that he was blond, I was like, 'Oh, he looks rare.'

"But then I didn't realise how rare he was until I kind of got home and showed, like, my family, and they've gone, you need to post that."

Ms Silcock, who lives in Waratah in north-western Tasmania, said the response to the video has been huge, attracting more than one million views across all of her social media posts.

Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary director Greg Irons said he has been working with native animals for more than 20 years.

He said he could count on one hand the number of encounters he has had with white echidnas.

"It is sort of a genetic mistake in a way, it's not a great trait to have if you're out in the wild," Mr Irons said.

"It makes you stand out like a sore thumb, so obviously a number of them won't sort of do that well."

However, unlike other animals affected by loss of colour pigmentation, echidnas are less dependent on camouflage for their survival, he said.

"As far as natural predators, there really aren't many for them at all.

"A lot of the ones we see are things like domestic dogs attacking them, Tassie devils are a threat, also being hit by cars, obviously, is always a threat."

UTAS echidna and playpus expert associate professor Stewart Nicol said there was no easy way to determine how many echidnas were albinos, but he admitted the condition was rare.

"In our study, a big field study, we tagged, collected, identified and followed approximately 200 animals. None of them was an albino," he said.

The biggest albino population in the state is on Flinders Island, he said.

"They're more likely to occur on islands just because it's a genetic condition ... and so the chance of the two parents carrying those genes... is greater on an island."

Professor Nicol also said not all white-coloured echidnas were albinos. Some were affected by a similar condition called leucism.

"It's all due to the same sort of failures of producing normal melanin ... but in leucism, it... usually doesn't affect the eyes."

A wildlife lover, Ms Silcock, who is originally from Newcastle, said she was amazed to encounter the furry, rare animal so soon after moving to a farm on the North-West Coast with her partner last year.

"They're pretty interesting critters, like, nothing really phases them at all, if you're in their way, they just walk around you.

"To kind of come down here [to Tasmania] and see them in abundance, and down here, they're so fluffy and cute - I've never seen that before."