Covered in black, downy feathers, the Dallas Zoo’s newest African penguins look more like your average farm chicks than the fierce and independent swimmers they will soon become.
The zoo hatched two members of the species earlier this year to add to its African penguin colony, now at 13 members.
It’s a big win for the species, whose population in the wild has declined by about 99% over the last few decades, said Ann Knutson, assistant supervisor of birds and a penguin zoologist at the Dallas Zoo.
“Every chick that we have is so important to keep the population because they’re the ones that really make that connection with the public, and help to inspire the public to care about African penguins,” she said.
The zoo staff is counting down the days until the the chicks are introduced to the rest of the colony. But while the first few weeks were smooth sailing, they didn’t have the easiest journey getting here.
Some bumps along the way
African penguins, the only nesting penguin found on the African continent, have been endangered since 2010, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Because of their endangered status, they are part of a species survival plan through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The association looks at all African penguins in North America to determine which would be good to breed based on factors like genetic diversity, Knutson said.
African penguins lay two eggs each time they breed, so the zoo had planned from the outset to welcome two chicks.
Within the Dallas Zoo’s colony, penguins named Tonka and Klondike were highly recommended by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to breed.
“They’re our most valuable pair, so that means that they don’t have a lot of offspring out there,” Knutson said. “That could also mean that they also don’t have a lot of siblings out in the population.”
The two laid eggs together in the past, but had problems during the incubation period and their chicks died before they were born.
Because of that history, zoo staff had planned to take the eggs from Tonka and Klondike and have another set of penguins raise them.
But shortly after Tonka, the female, laid her first egg, she laid on top of it and it broke.
“Penguins don’t have parenting books they can read,” Knutson said, adding that, while most penguins understand how to raise the chick once the egg is hatched, not all fully understand how to incubate an egg until then. “Although most have the instincts and they know how to do it, not all of them do that or do it correctly.”
The zoo gave Tonka and Klondike’s remaining egg to two other penguins, Pickles and Althea. The egg hatched Jan. 20.
Knutson said it’s perfectly fine for penguins to raise a chick even if they didn’t lay its egg, as long as the egg is given to them before it hatches. In the wild, African penguins recognize each other by their sounds, known as braying.
“They know each other by their voice, and they also know their chicks by their voice,” she said. “As soon as the chicks start making noises, the parents learn that voice and know that chick.”
To get a second egg, zoo staff moved down the list of recommended penguin pairs within their colony, penguins named Charlee and Tazo. On Feb. 5, their egg hatched.
When they laid their eggs, one was pulled so that it would not develop, a decision based on the zoo’s capacity for penguins. With 13 penguins including the two chicks, the zoo is maxed out.
“It feels like there’s an infinite amount of room in zoos to hold penguins, but there’s actually not, there’s a very finite number,” Knutson said. “The idea is we want to keep the population as diverse as possible” while staying within the capacity of the zoo.
Getting ready to swim
For now, both chicks stay behind the scenes with their parents. They can see the rest of the colony, but they won’t swim around in their habitat until their juvenile feathers come in, which usually happens when chicks are around 3 months old.
“For the first three months of life, they have these downy feathers and they’re not going in the water and those downy feathers are literally just to keep them warm,” Knutson said. “As they get older and they get their swim feathers, then they’ll go swim. That’s usually when the chicks really get to know the rest of the colony.”
When that happens, the penguins will make their public debut and establish their own territory within the colony. Knutson said she expects the chicks to be introduced to the exhibit in mid-April to early May, depending on when the youngest chick is ready.
It’s also around the three-month mark that the chicks will be due for their first vaccination, an especially exciting time because staff will be able to determine their sex.
There’s no way to physically tell the sex of an African penguin. Instead, staff will send a blood sample or a piece of the chick’s eggs to a lab to be analyzed, Knutson said.
Once they know their sex, the staff can settle on names. Knutson said they like to base their names off their personalities, which are already starting to shine through.
“The oldest chick is pretty sassy and has kind of an attitude, which is kind of funny because there’s this little puff ball with quite a bit of attitude,” she said. “Then the younger chick is kind of more standoffish and a little more shy.”
Knutson said in captivity the penguins will live to be anywhere between 30 and 40 years old, almost twice as long as they’d live in the wild. She said the chicks likely will eventually go to another facility to breed with other penguins.
Conservation in Africa
The Dallas Zoo also devotes resources to conservation efforts in South Africa, where African penguins in the wild lay their eggs.
Two of the largest threats to the African penguin population are overfishing and habitat loss, Knutson said.
In the wild, African penguins lay their eggs in guano, another term for bird poop, which serves as an insulator when it hardens.
But because guano is also a good fertilizer and there has been increased demand for organic products in recent years, there’s none left in which penguins can lay their eggs.
“Penguins have to nest in open nests, and that leaves their chicks vulnerable to predators, and heat in general from the sun,” Knutson said. “There’s no protection. It’s made it really hard for penguin parents to raise their chicks without having this shelter.”
Since 2018, the zoo has sent staff members to the continent through the African Penguin Artificial Nest Project, a program supported by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and partners in South Africa in which staff members install nest boxes for African penguins to lay and incubate their eggs.
They weren’t able to go in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. About 150 nest boxes were placed in 2018 and 2019.
“These nest boxes are amazing,” Knutson said. “There’s been a ton of research into them to make it as close to guano as possible. It’s pretty incredible.”
Knutson encouraged people to take steps in their daily lives to help the African penguin population.
“There’s a couple of really easy things to do here, even in Texas where we’re super far away from the African penguin population, that we can do to help, like reducing our use of single-use plastics,” she said. “One that I think is also super important is purchasing sustainable seafood and knowing where your food is coming from, because that directly correlates to the penguin population.”
