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A New Baby Penguin Is At The Aquarium Of The Pacific, And It's So Fluffy We Can’t Handle It
The baby penguin grows about 10% of its body weight every single day.
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Robin Riggs
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Courtesy of Aquarium of the Pacific
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A two-week-old Magellanic penguin is the cutest new resident at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.
“It's just a little bundle of fluffy joy,” said the aquarium’s Frankie Lill who specializes in aquatic birds and is helping the parents look after the baby penguin.
The Magellanic penguin is known for the black bands that run across their white bellies. In the wild this species of penguin can typically be found in the Falkland Islands, Argentina and Chile.
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If you want to see the baby penguin in its cutest stages, Lill said it’s best not to wait.
“It is growing, rapidly, about 10% of its body weight every single day,” Lill said. “Whenever I come back to my weekend, I see a whole new animal.”
You can also see the little black fluff ball on the aquarium’s penguin nest cam on Explore, a live nature cam website.
This baby bird doesn’t have a name yet, and it’s too early to even know its sex.
The penguin’s parents, known as Robbie “The Brave One” and Kate “The Flirt,” were rescued off the coast of Brazil about 11 years ago.
When the baby is ready to be apart from its parents in a few weeks, aquarium staff will take over feeding the penguin so it gets used to people.
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Rescued Magellanic penguins from South America swim in the water at the new June Keys Penguin Habitat at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, on May 16, 2012.
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Frederic J. Brown
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AFP via Getty Images
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By September, it should join the whole colony. The penguin habitat at the aquarium cares for nearly two dozen Magellanic penguins, each with color-coded ID tags on the wings.
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