When you think about penguins, one of the first things that comes to mind is cold weather. But, contrary to popular belief, most penguins do not live in frigid Antarctica.
“There are 18 species of penguins and the majority of them live in sub-Antarctic areas or temperate climates,” said Tom Schneider, curator of birds at the Detroit Zoo. “There are really only two species of penguins that are restricted to Antarctica.”
Three of the sub-Antarctic species — the king penguin, macaroni penguin and rockhopper penguin — can be found in the Penguinarium at the Detroit Zoo.
The brightly colored king penguins are about 3-1/2 feet tall and resemble the emperor penguins that were featured in the 2005 film “March of the Penguins.”
The macaroni and rockhopper penguins are “crested” species and are smaller.
Like all penguins, none of them can fly. But, they are all excellent swimmers.
“They make their living, basically, fishing,” Schneider said. “They spend a big portion of their life at sea. They come on land to breed, to molt once a year, and during nesting season.”
Macaroni and rockhopper species both lay two eggs, about five days apart.
“One of those eggs is considered to be an insurance policy,” Schneider said.
If the first egg hatches and survives, the second hatchling will not be able to compete with its older sibling. The parents will raise only one chick.
“The eggs are laid in a rock nest and the parents take turns going out to sea, catching fish, and regurgitating the food for the chick’s consumption,” Schneider said.
The king penguin lays only one egg, and, like the emperor penguin, both parents take turns incubating the egg on their feet.
“Both birds have a little flap of skin that sits over the egg and insulates the egg,” Schneider said. “They have a much longer incubation period, about 55 days. The parents are on land, between the two of them, incubating that egg.
“Then, it takes up to eight months for that chick to go from hatching to be able to swim. The parents have a lot of long-term investment in raising that chick from the egg to adulthood. They tend to raise only one chick every two years.
“Rockhoppers and macaronis fledge in three months and they nest every year.”
Once the chicks get bigger, parents go out to sea to fish, leaving the chicks gathered in a large crèche, which can number hundreds of thousands of birds.
“The parents come back and can find their chick out of that group of thousands of chicks,” Schneider said. “It’s not by smell, because birds don’t have a good sense of smell. It is most likely by the call of the bird.”
The Penguinarium at the Detroit Zoo opened in 1967. Despite its age, it remains one of the most popular habitats with zoo visitors. It is slated for replacement in the zoo’s new master plan.
“We’ve had lots of success through the years with these birds,” Schneider said. “We’ve raised a lot of chicks, and they are really very popular with the public. We work cooperatively with other zoos across the country on developing cooperative management programs for them. We do interchange birds with other zoos. Sometimes we get new birds in to be paired up with our birds, or we’ll send the birds that we raise here out to other zoos.
“That way, we can have a nice genetic diversity with our population at the zoo. We’re trying to avoid inbreeding as we raise our birds.”
Editor’s note: Animals of the Zoo is a weekly series.
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