Penguin Chick Hatches at the Aquarium

July 6, 2017

The Aquarium of the Pacific is announcing the arrival of a Magellanic Penguin chick. The penguin hatched at the Aquarium in late May. Parents Roxy and Floyd, residents of the Aquarium’s June Keyes Penguin Habitat, cared for the baby penguin until it was ready to go to its behind-the-scenes nursery to learn to take whole fish from keepers for feedings and to swim in shallow pools. The approximately one-month-old chick will be on public view when it joins the other birds in the penguin habitat sometime in August. In the meantime, the chick can be seen via webcam from the Aquarium of the Pacific’s website. The Penguin Cam is available courtesy of explore.org, the philanthropic multimedia arm of the Annenberg Foundation.

Roxy, the penguin chick’s mother, came to the Aquarium from Brazil. She was rescued and deemed non-releasable to the wild. The Aquarium nursed her back to health after she arrived at the Aquarium in 2005, and she paired up with Floyd shortly after. Their new chick will be joining its older siblings Skipper, Lily, Heidi, and Anderson (also Roxy and Floyd’s offspring) when it is ready to make its home in the penguin habitat. Around that time, the Aquarium expects to know if the baby penguin is male or female. In celebration of the baby bird, the Aquarium is offering the opportunity to adopt the chick through its Adopt an Animal program. Those adopting a penguin chick at the $100 level or higher before September 30, 2017, will have a chance to go behind the scenes for a feeding and training session with the penguins.

Magellanic Penguins are a temperate species native to the coasts of Argentina and Chile in South America. It takes between thirty-eight and forty-three days of incubation before a Magellanic Penguin egg will hatch. Magellanic Penguin parents take turns incubating the eggs on the nest and feeding and raising the chicks after they hatch. The chicks fledge, or replace their downy newborn feathers with watertight adult feathers, after about ninety days. The Aquarium’s penguin chick is expected to fledge in August and join its parents and the other penguins on exhibit in the June Keyes Penguin Habitat.

Media: The chick will move to the June Keyes Penguin Habitat in early August 2017. If you are interested in being updated when members of the media are allowed to film and photograph the chick, please email Marilyn Padilla at mpadilla@lbaop.org.