Photographer captures rare black penguin on South Georgia island: impressive footage

A completely black penguin was seen on the beach of South Georgia Island in the Atlantic. The extremely rare bird did not have a characteristic white belly like the rest of its relatives.

Scientists explain the completely black feathers of this king penguin by a genetic mutation. That is, it has an excess of melanin, a pigment that causes the entire body to darken, writes DailyMail.

Wildlife photographer Yves Adams became famous all over the world for finding and photographing an incredibly rare yellow penguin in South Georgia in 2021. And this time, in the Atlantic, he was looking for unusual birds in a feathered colony.

"I was hoping to see a golden penguin again among the masses of thousands of common penguins, but I managed to photograph another completely different bird. The black king penguin is "melanistic"! And that's a huge success because it's no less special," Adams said in a post on his Facebook page.

And indeed, among the huge colony, there was an amazing bird that stood out, which had a black belly instead of the usual white one. And even the feathers on its neck were also black, not yellow, as is traditionally the case with emperor penguins.

"I knew that I had little time to photograph this bird as it was heading to the colony. And I was really lucky that the penguin looked at me carefully when he came to land and went to his friends," the photographer said.

"Melanism is very rare in birds and mammals. I've heard that it's been seen in other species of penguins, so I've been wanting to see it with my own eyes for a long time," Yves added.

According to scientists, examples of black penguins are so rare that there is almost no research on this topic.

Black penguins are more visible to predators both on the ice and in the water because their normal white bellies help them blend in while swimming, experts say.

"First yellow, now black king penguin. What color do you think I should choose next time to search for them?" Yves Adams jokingly asked his followers. Many readers advised the photographer to look for a pink penguin. However, the most interesting of the proposed options is a rainbow penguin.

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