golden

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! 

Monkeys are naturally adorable so we needed to take a moment to appreciate the monkeys made from sunshine rays -- the golden lion tamarin! 

The golden lion tamarin gets its name from its lion-like thick mane and it's beautiful silky, long golden fur. It's an unusually bright and striking animal that can only be found in Rio de Janeiro, and even there only in fragmented forest habitats. 

The golden lion is an endangered species with only around 2,500 left of them in the wild. Due to Brazil's rainforest disappearing over agriculture, industry, and the ever-expanding logging, sadly, the golden lion tamarin is in danger of disappearing along with it. 

In 2018, The Boronia Veterinary Clinic in Australia announced on Facebook about a very rare and special guest at their clinic- a rescued brushtail possum with an incredible orange-yellow coat, often referred to as "Golden possums".  

 The real-life Pikachu was sadly found lying on the ground by a concerned rescuer when he was just five months old, after falling from her mom's back. After spending a night at Boronia Veterinary Clinic, she was placed with a wildlife carer.

Brushtail possums are usually a grayish color, but little Pikachu has a genetic mutation that means she lacks melanin. 

Turns out, those unusual colors may look beautiful to us but are actually posing a significant danger to the animal in the wild: "One of the issues with unusual colors, particularly if they are pale, is that this is a nocturnal animal and if they are pale, they are obvious to predators like an owl,"  Dr. Kath Handasyde from Melbourne University's School of Biosciences told Business Insider.

But this adorable possum is not the only one in Australia. There are more little pockets of them around Melbourne, but their location is kept secret by the volunteers in order to keep them safe.      

Story via: Business Insider