Many of us feel very connected to the world around us because of the animals that exist in our environment. Some of those animals are common, such as the squirrels we might see when we look out our window but others are rarely ever seen.
Penguins are a good example of animals that are not seen very often. We might see them at a zoo are perhaps on a video, but very few of us have had an opportunity to see them in person.
Then again, if you happen to live at the Gabriel Gonzalez Videla Base, you might be accustomed to seeing the black and white creatures. Even so, there was one particular penguin they saw recently that was a rare white gentoo penguin, and they caught it on film.
The bird is an unusual color because of a recessive gene, which is causing a condition known as leucism. Despite the fact that the penguin is white in a snowy environment, the bright feathers actually make it more vulnerable to predators.
If you were to see this penguin in the wild, you might think that it is an albino, but notice that the bird still has dark eyes. According to the National Park Service, it is one of the reasons why you can tell it is leucism. If it was albinism, she would also have different colored eyes.
A photographer at the base in Antarctica, Hugo Alejandro Harris Guerra said that this is only one of the many wonderful things you could expect to see while living near a penguin colony.
He said: “Here at Gabriel Gonzalez Videla Base there are 14 people who live in the middle of a colony of gentoo penguins. There are hundreds of them. It’s incredible. Every day there is something different to see.”