Rare albino buffalo draws crowds in Bangladesh ahead of Eid al-Adha

An albino buffalo with flowing blond hair and pinkish skin has become a magnet for crowds on a farm in Narayanganj, just outside Dhaka, where visitors have been arriving to photograph the animal and compare it to Donald Trump. The nearly 700-kilogram buffalo, raised by Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, has stood out not only for its unusual coloring but for its size and calm temperament, making it one of the season’s most talked-about livestock animals.

Mridha said his younger brother gave the buffalo its nickname after noticing the hair on its head. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo's extraordinary hair.” The resemblance is immediate enough that the Trump comparison has become part of the animal’s identity, turning a farmyard curiosity into a piece of global pop culture shorthand. In Bangladesh, where American political imagery is widely recognized through television, online video and social media, the name works because the silhouette is already familiar: the blond hair, the outsized personality, the spectacle around the figure.

The buffalo was photographed on May 18 and May 20, 2026, ahead of Eid al-Adha, which Bangladesh will observe on May 28, 2026. Visitors have traveled from distant districts to see it, posing for selfies and videos beside an animal that Mridha described as calm and generally peaceful unless provoked. The combination of novelty, holiday timing and social-media circulation has made the buffalo an unlikely celebrity in a country where livestock markets are already intensely visible in the days before the festival.

That visibility matters because Eid al-Adha is not just a religious observance but a major seasonal economy. Bangladesh said more than 3,600 makeshift and permanent cattle markets would be set up nationwide this year, and officials said 12,333,840 sacrificial animals were prepared for the holiday. In 2024, the country sacrificed more than 9.1 million animals during Eid al-Adha, including 4,705,106 cows and buffaloes. Against that backdrop, a single albino buffalo can attract attention far beyond one farm, showing how religion, commerce and viral culture now overlap in rural Bangladesh.