ZooBorns

A Bowl Full of Penguin

On June 8th the Santa Barbara Zoo welcomed its first ever Humboldt penguin chick. In this series of pictures you can watch the chick over the course of its first few weeks as veterinarians inspect it and then drop it in the bowl to be weighed, kind of like a safety seat for penguin chicks.

Penguin Chicks in the Palm of Your Hand

The Shedd Aquarium’s newly hatched Magellanic penguin chicks are small enough to fit into your cupped hands — for now, anyway. These chicks are between 15-24 days old and once full grown will be settled in the renovated penguin habitat in the Oceanarium’s new Polar Play Zone exhibit.

These fast-growing penguins triple in size during their first week. Magellanic penguins can grow to be around 27 inches high and weigh seven to nine pounds.

Web-footted Webcam Brings Penguins to the People

The Mystic Aquarium (shout out to the first aquarium I ever visited!) is sharing it's penguin chicks, born February 3, via the web. Visitors who can't make it to see the chicks in the "feather", can see their progress until they are fully fledged (which means all grown up!) online.

Penguin Chicks Look Really Soft

Sea World San Diego hatched 30 penguin chicks in 2008 adding to the over 500 hatched at the Penguin Encounter over the last two decades. Here is their most recent arrival, a baby Gentoo penguin which emerged from its shell on Dec. 1st.

Christmas Chicks

Another early Christmas present, this time for Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas, with both King penguin and Gentoo penguin hatchings in the last week and a half. In the pictures below, a little Gentoo penguin chick takes a ride in a sleigh, via tupperware. Gentoos build their nests out of rocks, which are then jealousy guarded. Particularly nice rocks are offered as gifts by male Gentoos to females to curry favor.

Photo shoot's over... time for Christmas dinner!

Lonesome penguin cheered up by his new friend... a stuffed toy

A baby penguin which had to be separated from its family after a greedy sibling continually ate all its food has found companionship - with this stuffed toy.

Mates: Pingu the penguin chick at the Living Coasts zoo in Torquay who has found solace with a stuffed toy

The penguin - called Pingu - began to lose weight and appeared weak after its bigger relative regularly helped himself to all the fish on offer.

Concerned keepers were forced to remove Pingu from the enclosure, but at just three-weeks-old the penguin was in desperate need of company.

Staff bought a £3.99 toy penguin from the zoo shop which acts as a surrogate sibling to the chuffed chick - who cuddles up to its new friend all day.

Comforting: Staff at the zoo decided to hand rear the baby African penguin after noticing its older sibling kept eating all it's food

There is hope for Pingu!