This penguin isn’t living in a black-and-white world.
A Belgian wildlife photographer shared a once-in-a-lifetime photo when he spotted a rare yellow penguin in South Georgia, the New York Post reports.
Yves Adams was leading a two-month photo exhibition in the South Atlantic in December 2019 when the group made a pit stop to photograph a colony of 120,000 king penguins on a nearby island.
That’s when Adams spotted the beautiful golden creature.
“I’d never seen or heard of a yellow penguin before,” the photographer told Kennedy News. “There were 120,000 birds on that beach and this was the only yellow one there.”
“It was heaven that he landed by us,” Adams recalled of the moment.
“If it had been 50 meters away we wouldn’t have been able to get this show of a lifetime,” he added of the bird, which stood out amongst his darker peers.
In the shots, the penguin is seen flapping belly-down in the water.
Naturally, bird-enthusiasts went wild over the snaps on Instagram. He compared the opportunity to "winning nature's lottery."
“That’s absolutely amazing,” one noted.
“Thank you for sharing this with the world! I’ve shared with my animal lover child and her friends,” another noted.
“We were so lucky the bird landed right where we were,” Adams added, telling the outlet that the bird was “never-before-seen.”
A condition called leucism, which is a loss of pigmentation, is responsible for the penguin’s tropical coloring.
“This is a leucistic penguin,” Adams explained, adding, “Its cells don’t create melanin anymore so its black feathers become this yellow and creamy color.”
Per the Smithsonian Insider, the yellow pigment in penguin feathers is meant to attract mates.
However, in this case, it’s unclear if the bird’s plumage makes him luckier with the ladies.
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