A wildlife photographer has managed to capture an incredible "never before seen" picture of a rare yellow penguin.
According to The Daily Mail, the images in question were taken by Yves Adams, a native of the town of Gent in Belgium, who spotted the unusual-looking bird while on a tour of Antarctica back in 2019.
On the way, his expedition stopped off in the isolated islands of South Georgia and there they were confronted by a massive colony of the squawking birds marching towards them.
However, Adams was immediately captivated by a certain King Penguin's eye-catching yellow plumage, and thinking quickly, he whipped out his camera and snapped a number of pictures of it in its natural habitat.
In a later post made on Facebook, on Thursday, February 18, 2021, Adams uploaded a number of pictures of the penguin in question, who can be seen swimming and standing with its many peers.
In a caption on Facebook, Adam wrote:
"Winning nature’s lottery with seeing the most beautiful King penguin ànd being able to take pictures!
"While unpacking our rubberboats merely after landing on a remote beach on the island of South-Georgia, this leucistic King penguin 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."
He continued:
"How lucky could I be! Yesterday the press picked up these pictures, and the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since then...It seems we are in desperate need for some mellow yellow news! A big thank you all of you for your nice messages!"
Per The Mail, Adams believes that the penguin's coloration is possibly one-of-a-kind. However, the phenomenon is not as rare as it may appear.
Back in 2012, another Antarctic tour was stunned by the appearance of a so-called "blonde" penguin near the South Shetland Islands.
In an interview with National Geographic, penguin expert P. Dee Boersma of the University of Washington in Seattle, who cited a 2009 study published in the zoological journal Marine Ornithology.
Boersma stated that the coloration of plumage was most likely caused by isabellinism - genetic mutation that dilutes pigment in penguins' feathers