By Ranjan Bhaduri
South Georgia, Mar 11, (THAINDIAN NEWS) In a phenomenon that has created a sensation among biologists, an extremely rare black bodied penguin has been located in an island in Southern Georgia by a batch of wildlife enthusiasts. The bird is reportedly affected by a rare condition named melanism. A number of travelers found the black penguin walking on Fortuna Bay and his picture was taken by Andrew Evans. An all black penguin is very rare to spot and the group members were elated when they saw the penguin. However, the black penguin is not much different from the regular ones as far as behavior or feeding habit is concerned.

The travelers reported that the black penguin was not keeping aloof and bonded well with its mates on the island. Since these penguins are rarely seen, the biologists have not been able to do much research on them. However, melanism is seen in some other animals like squirrels. Black penguins that have no white spots on their figure lose the control of pigmentation patterns. It is a sort of mutation that needs to be studied further. The discovery of the all black penguin has created a wave among the animal lovers as well. The pictures of the penguin are available in the web now.

It is difficult to say if the mutation will be passed over to the next generation by the black penguin since genetically passed features vary from one animal to another. However, such penguins can be easily traced among a group and hence they face greater danger of being targeted by the predator animals.