An extremely rare, perhaps the only, albino panda in the world has been spotted in southwest China. Footage of the panda's movements in the wild, captured by a camera, was filmed last February and spread by the national Wolong nature reserve in Sichuan province; these were shown on state television at the end of May. The panda, which is understood to be five or six years old, has no apparent health problems.
The image of the animal was first captured by the nature reserve's cameras in April 2019, at an altitude of about 2 meters. But when the nature reserve released these first images in May of this year, the panda's white fur and claws and red eyes were publicly seen.
According to Chinese Public Television CCTV, the nature conservation park's authorities have formed a special team to observe this panda since it was first spotted. The latest footage shows this all-white animal coexisting with many other black-and-white-spotted regular pandas at 2 meters above sea level.
Li Sheng, a researcher at Beijing University's School of Life Sciences, explained that the albino panda is the first species to be seen in nature. Li stated that it is not yet known whether their genes have been passed on to other small pandas, and more follow-up and research is needed to determine this.
Pandas live in China and mostly live in the mountainous regions of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. According to China's 2021 biodiversity report, approximately 860 pandas live in their natural habitat.