Rare Albino Giant Panda Spotted

Rare albino giant panda spotted visiting other pandas in China nature reserve

A rare all-white albino panda has made another appearance in new footage from China’s Wolong nature reserve. Back in April 2019, the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province in southwestern China released a picture of the all-white panda, which at the time was 1 or 2 years old, captured by an infrared triggered remote camera.

The reserve released new, recently captured footage of the panda dropping in for a visit with a mother panda and cub, which were resting in a tree hollow. The mother panda’s response suggests to experts the all-white panda may also its offspring.

Typically, a mother panda would be very protective of the cub, Wei Rongping, a senior engineer at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas, told the Shine digital news site, an English-language service created by Shanghai Daily. “This female panda was extremely ‘calm’ and did not conform to the general rule. One possibility is that the female panda is the mother of the all-white panda,” Wei said.

Wei described the cub in the footage as “about one to two years old, and the all-white panda is nearly the size of an adult.”

Hopefully, more videos will be forthcoming because the reserve has 15 other video recordings of the three pandas in the same area in a short time period, reported The Straits Times of Singapore.

The giant all-white panda has no spots and red eyes, leading experts to consider it an albino and the only one known to exist, according to several outlets including the official Xinhua News Agency.