A Quirk of Nature

One of the bonuses of the recent workshop at Arkaroola was coming across a really rare sight.

It’s an albino yellow-footed rock wallaby.

Numbers of these animals have been in decline for many years so an albino is a fairly rare creature.

Apart from having a striking resemblance to a stuffed toy, the albino is at least twice as big as a normal fully grown member of the species and possibly even bigger.

Typical yellow-foots are about the size seen in the photo here

The animal in the right hand corner of this photograph is probably an offspring of the albino which is a female and has a joey in the pouch.

Albino animals are usually very sensitive to sunlight and this wallaby is no different. It wasn’t until I noticed something different about her eyes that I magnified the picture and found that her eyelids and eye lashes had grown very large as protection again sunlight.

The albino seems to have adapted to her environment despite here generic handicap.