On an island off the coast of South Georgia, a wildlife photographer recently came across a yellow penguin (between Antarctica and the tip of South America).
In the process of unloading their shooting equipment, Belgian Yves Adams and his team were surprised to see an unusual bird emerge from a colony of over 120,000 black and white king penguins.
“One of the birds looked really strange, and when I looked closer it was yellow. We all went crazy when we realized. We dropped all the safety equipment and grabbed our cameras,” Adams said in an interview with The Independent.
“I’d never seen or heard of a yellow penguin before.”
“We were so lucky the bird landed right where we were. Our view wasn’t blocked by a sea of massive animals. Normally it’s almost impossible to move on this beach because of them all.”
Adams believes the penguin was “leucistic,” which means that its cells no longer produce melanin, causing its normally black feathers to turn a yellow and creamy appearance due to the condition.
Although a “white” chinstrap penguin was discovered in Antarctica in 2012, and a 1999 study found leucism in approximately 1 in 120,000 Adelie penguins, there have been no known images of them, particularly none that are as clear as this one:
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