AFP
As white as snow: This is a rare gentoo penguin specimen without the usual twotone plumage, due to a genetic variation that surprised the Chilean Navy team at the Gabriel González Videla base in Antarctica.
“On January 4th we had the arrival of a very peculiar penguin, completely white,” reported Hugo Harros, cook at the scientific station in the port captain of Baía Paraíso, in the north of the Antarctic Peninsula.
At the base, 14 people live in a colony of thousands of these birds, known scientifically as Pygoscelis papua, identified by their beautiful black upper color with white accents on the belly and above the eyes.
However, the specimen seen was “completely different from the others,” emphasized Harros, a 33yearold sergeant who is on a fourmonth mission to the White Continent until March.
“This penguin had leucism,” he added, referring to a genetic variation that partially or completely affects the color of an animal's skin, feathers or fur, but does not make it more sensitive to the sun, as does albinism the case is.
Diego Mojica, a marine biologist at the Malpelo Foundation who is accompanying a Colombian Navy Antarctic mission aboard the science vessel ARC Simón Bolívar, explains that leucism is “the product of a recessive gene that appears to be hereditary.”
“In a certain percentage of thousands of penguins, an individual can be born with this extraordinary condition,” he points out.
In videos taken by Harros, it is possible to see the bird with soft reddish beak and wings and whitish plumage on the rocks among its bicolor colony.
People at the military base “were very surprised by the encounter we had,” the sergeant said. “We wanted to take quick photos as a souvenir,” he emphasized, also an amateur photographer.
The species Pygoscelis papua has a population of 774,000 individuals, which is considered stable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
However, scientists estimate that human activities can have an impact on your health.
The discovery in 2022 of a colony of these penguins in an Antarctic area further south than usual worried conservation authorities about the possible effects of climate change.
Papuans, which can reach a height of around 90 centimeters, are considered the fastest penguins under water and can reach speeds of up to 36 km/h.