Animal Adventure Park celebrates birth of extremely rare white kangaroo

Animal Adventure Park is closed for the season, but the excitement is alive and well at the interactive, outdoor animal park, which is celebrating the birth of an extremely rare color mutation of red kangaroo. One of the park’s red kangaroos gave birth to a new joey several months ago, and the first look by keepers revealed an incredibly uncommon white joey.

Red kangaroos are born about the size of a human’s thumbnail, and much of their development takes place in their mother’s pouch. After four to five months of growth and nurturing by mom, keepers are able to safely perform the first “pull”, removing the baby from mom’s pouch for a full inspection and medical review. The joey is then returned to mom’s pouch. 

An inspection late last week revealed the very rare leucistic male joey, born to parents Rosie and Boomer. Today, the park announced that the baby kangaroo has been named Cosmo.  

“We are not aware of any leucistic red kangaroo in the United States, indicating just how rare of an occurrence this is,” Jordan Patch, owner of Animal Adventure Park, said. “We are now working with professionals in the zoological community to determine just how unique of a blessing this little one is!” 

Different from albinism, leucism is a partial loss of pigmentation, which causes an animal to have white or patchily colored skin and fur, but the condition does not affect the pigment cells in the eyes. This particular joey has a white coat and black color pigmentation in the eyes, prompting the park’s animal care experts to consider this animal leucistic, rather than albino. The genetic combination between Rosie and Boomer is what yielded this surprising coloration. 

Animal Adventure is an interactive, educational animal park, home to over 100 species, located in the hills of Harpursville, N.Y., located 15 minutes outside of Binghamton, N.Y. The park is looking forward to its ninth season, with a tentative re-opening date of April 28, 2021.