Extremely Rare Never-Before-Seen Yellow Penguin Captured By Photographer

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AmyBrown
Feb 21, 2021 10:00 AM EST

Rare animals are... well, rare to come by. And this golden penguin is no exception! One wildlife photographer, Yves Adams, has won nature's lottery by being the first to spot and capture a never-before-seen yellow penguin. The penguin is a King penguin, potentially the very first of its kind. 

Yves Adams believes that the yellow penguin spotted on an island in South Georgia is leucistic. Leucism is a condition that results in the partial loss of pigmentation. Whereas albinism is the absence of melanin, leucism is only partial, which can make the animal have white or patchy colored skin, feathers, or hair. 

In an interview with the Independent, Yves Adams had this to say about the rare and unique moment he first spotted the yellow penguin, "I'd never seen or heard of a yellow penguin before. There were 120,000 birds on that beach, and this was the only yellow one there. They all looked normal except for this one. It really was something else. It was an incredibly unique experience. 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 continued, "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. It was heaven that he landed by us. If it had been 50 metres away, we wouldn't have been able to get this show of a lifetime."

This isn't the first time we've seen rare golden animals out in the wild, but it is the very first golden penguin! 

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    Water
    via Yves Adams/Kennedy News
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    Penguin
    via Yves Adams/Kennedy News

    Can you imagine seeing a crowd of penguins and all of a sudden seeing this gorgeous and never-before-seen yellow penguin? We're sure it was quite the experience! In the past, others have been lucky to win nature's lottery, one photographer even spotted a strawberry lion!

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    Mammal - sothisiswhatieat yellow penguin! this story made my day. shows there's always something new to learn about nature
    via Yves Adams/Kennedy News
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    Font - yves_adams Winning nature's lottery with seeing the most beautiful King penguin ànd being able to take pictures! While unpacking our rubberboats merely after landing on a remote beach on the island of South- Georgia, this leucistic King penguin walked up straight to our direction in the middle of a chaos full of Sea elephants and Antarctic fur seals, and thousands of other King penguins. How lucky could I be! Yesterday the press picked up these pictures, and the phone hasn't stopped ringi
    via Yves Adams/Kennedy News
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    via @yves_adams

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photograph yellow rare golden unique penguin animals beautiful photographer
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