Even though most penguins wear black and white tuxedos, there’s one stylish guy who’s bucking the trend with a trendy yellow coat.

Just recently were the photographs of the endangered penguin made public after a wildlife photographer had taken them on a South Georgian island in December 2019. In the midst of a commotion including sea elephants, Antarctic fur seals, and thousands of other king penguins, a king penguin “walked up straight to our direction,” as described by Belgian photographer Yves Adams and shared on Instagram. “I am so fortunate!”

During his two-month photographic journey across the South Atlantic, Adams made a pit break on a beach in South Georgia. He noticed a flurry of penguins swimming toward the coast as he unpacked the safety gear; one in particular attracted his attention.

It was cоmpletely new tо me tо hear abоut оr see a yellоw penguin. “This was the оnly yellоw оne there оut оf 120,000 birds оn that beach,” Adams tоld Kennedy News and Media. “When we realized it, we all went insane. In оrder tо get оur cameras, we set aside all оf the safety gear.

Like their closely related relative the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri), the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) usually sports a black-and-white plumage accented with a collar that flashes a yellowish-gold hue. Despite being “unique to penguins,” the Australian Antarctic Program reports that not all penguin species possess the yellow pigments.

It appears that this penguin has kept its yellow plumage but has shed its black plumage, which is usually colored by a substance called melanin.

The Australian Antarctic Program reports that penguins with distinctive plumage are uncommon and that it can be challenging to determine the source of the unusual hues just by observing the penguins. Injuries, changes in nutrition, and illnesses can all play a role in a bird’s odd coloring, but genetic abnormalities are the most common cause. For instance, mutations in the melanin gene can produce black plumage in “melanistic” penguins and white plumage in “albinistic” penguins.

Melanin, the pigment that gives some of the yellow penguin’s feathers their black hue, was lost. (Yves Adams/Kennedy News and Media)

Adams explained tо Kennedy News that the yellоw bird suffers frоm leucism, a hereditary disоrder characterized by partial melanin lоss.

Even though she wasn’t on the trip, conservation scientist and UW professor Dee Boersma concurred. The penguin in question is leucistic, according to Boersma, who informed Live Science via email that the animal is pigment deficient. “All pigment has been lost by true albinos.” (“The bird must have retained some of the pigment,” Boersma added, referring to the bird’s brown head.”)

Nonetheless, there are many who hold the opposite view.

Kevin McGraw, an integrative behavioral ecologist from Arizona State University, who was also not on the expedition, stated, “I wouldn’t call the bird leucistic,” due to the penguin’s apparent absence of melanin.

The lack of melanin in its plumage, feet, and eyes makes it appear albino, according to McGraw. However, in order to definitively confirm the presence or absence of melanin, “we’d need feather samples for biochemical testing,” he stated.

Albinos can still have pigments other than melanin, he said.

Although it still has some yellow pigment in its feathers, the penguin has lost the carotenoid, or yellow-orange-red, pigment from its beak and the melanin pigment from its feathers. As a result, some colors had their genetic and cellular machinery eliminated while others endured. As far as McGraw could tell, there weren’t many other photographs or birds that were similar to this. All this time, this photo has captivated me.

The rarity of birds with such unusual plumage is probably not coincidental.

According to McGraw, penguins employ their plumage and body color for a number of reasons, including as camouflage, mating, and sun protection. “Survival and reproduction could be affected by such color aberrations.”

“They got this show of a lifetime,” Adams exclaimed, praising the team’s good fortune in having the yellow penguin land so near. There wasn’t an ocean of gigantic creatures that obscured our vision. Every time I come here, the number of people makes it nearly hard to walk on the beach.