Five Sisters Zoo welcomes eight Humboldt penguins just in time for the school holidays!
Humboldt penguins are one of 18 penguin species in the world and are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN. They live on the rocky coastal shores of Peru and Chile in the wild and face a number of threats such as climate change, over-fishing of their natural food sources, and rising ocean temperatures. This means that individuals now face dwindling resources, such as food, in their natural habitat.
Adam Welsh, Head of Education at Five Sisters Zoo, said:
“We are thrilled to be welcoming these incredible animals to our zoo. They’ll be excellent ambassadors for their species and will play a huge role in our much-loved engagement and education programmes.
“Native to rocky habitats between the Atacama Desert of South America and the Pacific Ocean, these fascinating penguins surprisingly don’t come from the land of snow and ice as many might think. We all have high hopes for breeding here at Five Sisters and we would be delighted if these new zoo residents could contribute to a healthy and stable zoo population in the future. We can’t wait to introduce these wonderful animals to everyone in the weeks and months to follow.”
Humboldt penguins are one of 18 penguin species in the world and are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN. They live on the rocky coastal shores of Peru and Chile in the wild and face a number of threats such as climate change, over-fishing of their natural food sources, and rising ocean temperatures. This means that individuals now face dwindling resources, such as food, in their natural habitat.
Adam Welsh, Head of Education at Five Sisters Zoo, said:
“We are thrilled to be welcoming these incredible animals to our zoo. They’ll be excellent ambassadors for their species and will play a huge role in our much-loved engagement and education programmes.
“Native to rocky habitats between the Atacama Desert of South America and the Pacific Ocean, these fascinating penguins surprisingly don’t come from the land of snow and ice as many might think. We all have high hopes for breeding here at Five Sisters and we would be delighted if these new zoo residents could contribute to a healthy and stable zoo population in the future. We can’t wait to introduce these wonderful animals to everyone in the weeks and months to follow.”
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00:53 My name's Adam, I'm Head of Education here at Five Sisters Zoo, and we're here today to introduce you guys to eight wonderful new arrivals, our humble penguins, that just arrived last night actually.
01:04 And you can see them just behind me here just now. So we've got three youngsters just sat up on the rocks here, and five adults swimming around in the pool just behind them.
01:15 And these humble penguins are native to the kind of really rocky coastlines of Peru and Chile, and you know, so they're not from the Antarctic, they're not from Antarctica, they don't come from snowy, icy habitats like you might expect them to.
01:29 They actually come from a really rocky habitat between the Atacama Desert and the Pacific Ocean, so they're wonderful, wonderful animals, an incredible species from an incredible habitat.
01:38 They're now vulnerable to extinction in the wild as well, so we're delighted to have these guys here as ambassadors for their species.
01:45 And we're going to be getting humble penguins very involved in all of our future education programs and learning opportunities here at Five Sisters, so we're really, really excited.
01:55 They took to their habitat straight away. They arrived here last night, we opened up the carry cases that were brought to us in, and they came straight out, and they were straight into the water as well.
02:03 You can see the adults are enjoying the pool a little bit more this afternoon than the youngsters that are kind of sat out here on the banks, but they've all been in, they've all had a good swim, and they came right out as soon as they arrived.
02:15 So here at Five Sisters we've got over 160 different animal species, you know, everything from the penguins that we're talking about here today through to animals like brown bears and cheetahs.
02:24 We've also got one of the largest reptile collections in the country as well, so there's lots of really exciting wildlife to come along to see, engage with, and get excited about here at Five Sisters.
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