A penguin's black and white dress code is common knowledge for most, which is why the discovery of a single yellow-coated penguin found on the isles of South Georgia stunned biologists.
Yves Adams, a wildlife photographer from Belgium, captured rare images of the unusual yellow king penguin on a remote island in South Georgia in December of 2019. The photo recently released on Instagram was captioned, "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."
Adams tells Kennedy News and Media, "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."
The Majestic King Penguins
Aptenodytes patogonicus or king penguins are closely related and often confused with Aptenodytes fosteri or commonly known as emperor penguins.
King penguins are dressed in their black and white coat with a yellowish dash of color on their collar. Yellow pigment is "unique to penguins," however not all species can have them, says the Australian Antarctic Program.
These majestic flightless birds can stand as tall as 100 centimeters and weigh 10-16 kilograms making them the 2nd largest penguin species. Commonly found in the Antarctica region, king penguin's diets include small crustaceans, small fish, and squid.
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The Rare Yellow King Penguin
Adams's rare sighting of a rare yellow king penguin may have been because the penguin lost its dark feathers that are usually colored by a blackish pigment called melanin.
Unusual plumage is rare and it can be hard to identify the cause of the manifestation of rare colors with the naked eye. Unusual coloring can be because of disease, diet, injury, or in many instances are due to mutations in the bird's genes.
These mutations can cause "melanistic" penguins that are colored black, where the norm is white and "albinistic" penguins that lack melanin turn white.
Adams tells Kennedy News that the rare yellow king penguin had a genetic condition known as leucism where it only lost some of its melanin.
Dee Boersma, a conservation biologist and professor from the University of Washington, tells Live Science, "This penguin is lacking some pigments while true albinos have lost all pigments."
However, many disagree, making the yellow king penguin the subject of a hot debate.
Kevin McGraw, a behavioral ecologist from Arizona State University argues, "I wouldn't call the bird leucistic, because the penguin seems to lack all melanin." he adds that the penguin does in fact look albino but feather samples for biochemical testing would be the best way to settle the debate.
A penguin's feather color offers a variety of functions such as mate selection, protection from UV light, and camouflage. McGraw explains that it's possible for color aberrations such as the rare yellowish-gold hue of the recently sighted king penguin could impact both reproduction and survival.
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