Black Beauty

Penguins keep surprising us, as this all-black King Penguin on the left shows. The remarkable animal was spotted in Fortuna Bay, South Georgia, waddling around with his dull, white-chested King Penguin friends. In contrast to his friends, the all-black King Penguin is –what a surprise- completely black due to an increased melanin level in his body, a disorder also called melanism. Melanism quite often occurs in certain animals, like in squirrels, but in penguins it is extremely rare and biologists believe less than one in a million penguins show this unique feature. The black beauty probably got a mutation in one of the genes responsible for the control of pigmentation, but besides that our striking friend is completely healthy. Who thought they had seen everything with gay penguins, think again.