Collins family of Victoria find rare albino kangaroo in their backyard

AN AUSSIE dad took this amazing footage after his children found a mysterious-looking marsupial hopping around their back yard.

Skippy the albino Eastern Grey and his mum pose for the camera in Michael Collins’ back yard.

IT looks for all the world like a ghost in these stills, but this marsupial is very real. And very, very rare.

It’s an albino kangaroo, a one-in-20,000 occurrence in Australia — and it’s living on Michael Collins’ 11-acre property in Wattle Glen, northeast of Melbourne.

“The kids came running into the house from the paddock yelling ‘Dad! Dad! Someone spray painted a kangaroo!’” the single father-of-three told News.com.au.

“It’s an albino Eastern Grey and it’s part of a group of about 20 that we come home to at the end of every day.”

Madison, 10, Charli, eight and Bailey, six, have named the roo “Skippy”. The animal is a still a youngster and Mr Collins remembers seeing it as a joey in its mother’s pouch not long ago.

“The others are very protective of it, they never let it wander far on its own or anything but I think that’s because it’s young, not because it’s albino.”

Skippy has been verified as an albino by University of Technology Sydney conservation biologist Dr Daniel Ramp.

“This animal looks perfectly healthy,” Dr Ramp told Nine News after watching Mr Collins’ footage. “The behaviour and its responsiveness to its mum all looks good.”

And as if being born albino didn’t make Skippy special enough, the animal’s eyes are dark rather than pink usually seen in albino mammals.

Despite this anomaly, the roo was definitely still albino, Dr Ramp told Nine.

still “The way the condition is expressed, not all cases of albinism are the same,” he said.