Black Penguin by Andrew Evans

A rare black penguin was photographed last week! Honestly, if this wasn’t coming from National Geographic I might have a hard time believing it.

Andrew Evans took this photo near Fortuna Bay on the subantarctic island of South Georgia during his travels to Antarctica.

Andrew Evans writes:

He looked like a single black king moving across a chessboard of so many white pawns. Our first glimpse was puzzling until we drew closer and realized that this was not some other bird but indeed another penguin of a different color.

This penguin has a condition know as melanism.

From Wikipedia:

Melanism is the occurrence of an increased amount of dark pigmentation (as of skin, feathers, eyes or hair) in an organism, resulting from the presence of melanin. It is the opposite of leucism and albinism, which occur because of a lack of melanin or other types of pigment.

Dr. Allen Baker, ornithologist and professor of Environmental and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Toronto and head of the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum, told National Geographic:

Well that is astonishing. I’ve never ever seen that before. It’s a one in a zillion kind of mutation somewhere. The animal has lost control of its pigmentation patterns. Presumably it’s some kind of mutation.

Melanism occurs is many different animals, but is extremely rare in penguins.

Andrew Evans writes:

All-black penguins are so rare there is practically no research on the subject–biologists guess that perhaps one in every quarter million of penguins shows evidence of at least partial melanism, whereas the penguin we saw appears to be almost entirely (if not entirely) melanistic.

Not only is it rare, but what about actually finding one among the thousands of penguins! I can understand why some may doubt it.

You can read the rest of Andrew Evans’s journey on his blog called Bus2Antartica at National Geographic. If your on Twitter, follow him on at Bus2Antarctica.

Update: Andrew Evans also captured the rare black penguin on video!