Visitors to the Animal Adventure Park in New York will soon be able to view one rare animal - a kangaroo with white fur. The zoo revealed that one of their kangaroos had given birth to a joey with all-white fur a post shared on social media Friday.
The white joey was born several months ago to a red kangaroo. Its "extremely rare" white colour was revealed only when staff removed it from the mother's pouch recently for a full inspection.
"This is not your standard red kangaroo!" Animal Adventure Park wrote in a Facebook post that has gone massively viral. "Red kangaroos are born the size of your thumbnail, and do much of their development in mom's pouch, outside of the womb. At the age of approximately 4-5 months, we do our first full "pull", removing baby from mom's pouch for a full inspection and medical review, and then return the joey to mom's pouch for her to raise."
Their inspection on Friday revealed that the joey born to a red kangaroo named Rosie was born with white fur. Take a look at pictures of the baby kangaroo below:
According to the zoo, the white kangaroo is likely a leucistic male joey.
Leucism, a partial loss of pigmentation, is different from albinism. The zoo believes that this joey is leucistic because its eyes are black and "not your normally anticipated red-eyed albino mutation".
"We are not aware of any leucistic red kangaroo in the United States; proving just how rare this occurrence is!" the zoo wrote.
The announcement created excitement on social media, where the post has received over 25,000 'likes' and over 2,400 comments.
"Congratulations, I am so happy to see this little fellow be in a place where he can be respected and treated with care while educating others," wrote one Facebook user.
"How exciting!" said another.
