Pictures of a super rare albino panda have been captured at a nature reserve in southwest China.
With white fur, white claws and red eyes, the panda appears to carry all the markers of albinism. The pictures were captured by an infrared camera trap as the panda wandered through the forest in Wolong National Nature Reserve last month.
According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, the photographs prove that albinism — a genetic condition in which there is a lack of the skin pigment melanin — exists in wild pandas. Prior to this, experts were aware that albinism existed in pandas, but photographs of a completely white animal had never before been caught on camera.
Li Sheng, from Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Natureat told the news outlet that the panda is an albino and is aged one-to two years old. The sex of the bear could not be determined from the photographs.
With less than 2,000 wild pandas in the world, the panda is the rarest of the bear species. This shot of an albino panda is incredibly rare given how infrequently albinism manifests.
There are reportedly another 548 pandas in captivity around the world, none of which are known to carry the mutation.
Pandas are currently listed as a vulnerable, which means that their survival is threatened despite conservation efforts helping to reduce the danger of extinction of the species.
Earlier this month, China announced it had developed an app that will allow conservationists at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas to identify the creatures using facial recognition technology and a database of over 120,000 images. This will help researchers to identify individual animals.
Last year, China also announced plans to create a giant bastion for the pandas that will encourage breeding among the existing wild populations.
