Incredible Footage Shows Ultra Rare All-Black King Penguin On South Georgia Island

An ultra-rare all-black penguin has been spotted on South Georgia Island, standing out among its more typical black-and-white buddies by bucking the tuxedo trend with an entirely black body. Remarkably, the rare animal was captured by a photographer who’s no stranger to unusual color morphs, having snapped a peculiar yellow-and-white penguin back in 2021.

After receiving a tip from his expedition leader that there was an unusual bird waddling across South Georgia Island, Belgium-based photographer Yves Adams went in search, camera in hand. His efforts were rewarded when he found a king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) like no other he’d seen before, one with black feathers all over its body.

“Melanism is something that occurs very rarely within birds and mammals,” said Adams in a statement sent to IFLScience. “I’ve heard about it before in other species of penguins so I’ve wanted to see it for a really long time.”

“It’s one out of a colony of hundreds of thousands of penguins that has this colour morph.”

It’s been estimated that just partial melanism could be as rare as one in a quarter million – and without much in the way of documentation or scientific study of all-black penguins, this fancy king penguin is likely even rarer. As Dr Allan Baker, an ornithologist and professor of Environmental and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Toronto, told National Geographic, melanistic birds typically have at least some white patches. 

You can see an example of this in a clip from the BBC series Dynasties that shows a bird with white spots on its otherwise black belly. Given that even this bird had producers asking “is this the rarest penguin on Earth?” – this latest all-black penguin might just swipe the title.

“I don’t believe anyone has seen this all black penguin before,” added Adams. “The season has only just started on South Georgia, we were only the third boat to land there. I hope other people get to see it too.”

“I was super excited to see a pure melanistic penguin as there are spotted or partly melanistic birds. From a distance the black is super black, but when you get closer some of the markings on its neck and belly are like a metallic green. It was completely accepted by the other birds and his size wasn’t different in any way.”

The melanistic penguin has done well to make it to adulthood when you consider that a white belly is an adaptation that helps king penguins blend into the environment. Without its camouflage, this all-black penguin is likely more visible to predators, but that hasn’t stopped it so far.

Melanism is the name given to a mutation that results in more melanin than is typical for an animal. Melanin is the pigment that makes skin, fur, and feathers black, so an animal with partial melanism may have patches of black, or you may get an entirely melanistic individual that’s black from head to toe. It is basically the opposite of albinism and leucism, in which an individual lacks pigment and therefore appears paler. In fact, that’s what gave us the meringue-colored penguin (a meringuin, if you please).

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