A rare ginger-colored seal pup has been discovered on Russia's Tyuleniy Island, hiding under a pile of logs, hungry and alone. Its seal family abandoned it, likely for being albino. 61-year-old nature photographer Anatoly Strakhov tells the shocking tale of seal colorism to The Daily Mail:

He was not playing with other baby seals he just was hiding and waiting for his mother to come and feed him. As soon as I saw him I knew he was different, he had a very strange color fur and looked different from his two black brothers. When the seal saw me he turned his head to me as I took his picture. I spent around half an hour photographing him, I was pleased to be able to capture such an unusual animal. But it is a great pity because, the poor seal is almost blind and so was unlikely to survive in the wild.

Our sole consolation: This story appears in a British tabloid, so maybe it's all an elaborate ruse, and the half-blind ginger seal orphan will soon reach out one of his sad pink flippers, then rip off his adorable ginger face, revealing that he is actually Botox Mom in a fur suit!

Strakhov says he alerted a local "dolphinarium," which has taken the world's loneliest baby seal into its care. [Daily Mail, Metro]