Elephants can be born with albinism, same as humans. Back in the old days in Siam, such rare elephants were considered sacred and automatically became the property of the king. Some enterprising King of Siam came up with the idea of giving his albino elephants away to members of his court he wanted to punish. Being sacred animals, they could not be killed or put to work; being elephants, they ate tons of food, produced tons of, um, need for upkeep, and kept on doing both for decade after decade. Being "given" a white elephant turned rich nobles into poor ones, and poor ones into peasants.