diff --git a/pyqtgraph/graphicsItems/CurvePoint.py b/pyqtgraph/graphicsItems/CurvePoint.py
index bb6beebc..f7682a43 100644
--- a/pyqtgraph/graphicsItems/CurvePoint.py
+++ b/pyqtgraph/graphicsItems/CurvePoint.py
@@ -91,6 +91,11 @@ class CurvePoint(GraphicsObject):
         pass
     
     def makeAnimation(self, prop='position', start=0.0, end=1.0, duration=10000, loop=1):
+        # In Python 3, a bytes object needs to be used as a property name in
+        # QPropertyAnimation. PyQt stopped automatically encoding a str when a
+        # QByteArray was expected in v5.5 (see qbytearray.sip).
+        if not isinstance(prop, bytes):
+            prop = prop.encode('latin-1')
         anim = QtCore.QPropertyAnimation(self, prop)
         anim.setDuration(duration)
         anim.setStartValue(start)