'Our jaws are on the floor': Extremely rare white kangaroo born in New York zoo

The Animal Adventure Park in New York, recently revealed that one of their kangaroos has given birth to an "extremely rare” white joey. While taking to Facebook, the zoo informed that the joey was born several months ago to a red kangaroo. “Our jaws are on the floor,” the zoo wrote, while also adding that the “rare” white colour was revealed only when staff removed it from the mother’s pouch recently for a full inspection. 

In the caption, the zoo wrote, “At the age of approximately 4-5 months, we do our first full "pull", removing the 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”. 

“Today's inspection revealed an EXTREMELY RARE, what we are currently considering, Leucistic male joey,” the officials added. 

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The pictures in the post-show the baby kangaroo being cradled by handlers and held in front of a full-grown red kangaroo. The zoo explained that the joey’s colouring is caused by a rare “lack of colour pigmentation” and that his black eyes are what make him ‘leucistic’ as opposed to "your normally anticipated red-eyed albino mutation". Leucism is a partial loss of pigmentation and it is different from albinism. 

Further, in the post, the zoo said that the joey’s colouration was a “surprise to us all” and was caused by the genetic combination between his parents, Rosie and Boomer. The officials also revealed that they waited until now to inspect the joey as “red kangaroos are born the size of your thumbnail”. They added that joeys do much of their development in mom’s pouch, outside of the womb. 

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‘2021 starting in a positive direction’ 

Meanwhile, the Facebook post has created excitement on social media as netizens couldn’t stop gushing over the “adorable” joey. The post has received nearly 25k likes and thousands of comments. While one user wrote, “How beautiful, you guys do an excellent job with all tour animals, I'm just so impressed,” another added, “Congratulations! What a beautiful baby white kangaroo joey. Surprises come in all different ways”. “I think this little guy is the cutest thing I've ever seen, look at those huge ears and feet, such an adorable baby,” added third. 

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