Recently, Thomas Jung, the Senior Wildlife Biologist with the Government of Yukon and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta, stumbled upon something extraordinary.
He was walking around a rural area near Whitehorse in Canada on August 29th when he noticed something that hadn’t been seen before.
Quickly grabbing his cell phone, he hit record to capture an elusive creature on video – one which would soon go viral.
Thomas captured a 30 second clip which showed what appeared to be some kind of wild cat calmly sitting in someone’s yard about 50 meters away from him.
In spite of all the commotion coming from a nearby barking dog, the animal seemed relatively undisturbed by its presence.
At around 16 seconds into the video it starts to walk away and eventually slinks out of view completely.
Although the resolution isn’t great, Thomas was confident that it was lynx due to its short tail and ear tufts.
But more interestingly still, this particular lynx had never been documented before – experts confirmed that this was actually a melanistic Canada lynx.
Melanism is a rare genetic mutation that affects various species including mule deer, alligator gar and cats like bobcats (in fact there have been 20 black bobcats recorded in 100 years).
This sighting also added significantly to only small number of coat color variations found within Lynx genus according to Phys.org.
Thanks to technology being such an integral part of our lives these days – especially phones being readily available everywhere – we were able see this beautiful sight thanks to Thomas’s quick thinking.