Featured Image Credit: Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium via Twitter
By Kira Krall
Point Defiance Zoo recently welcomed its first penguin chick since 2006: a newborn Magellanic penguin! The parents of the chick are one of four mated pairs of Magellanic penguins at the Zoo. All of the couples have eggs and the Point Defiance Zoo welcomed a second chick a few days after their first record-breaking chick.
Once a female lays an egg, the female and male take turns incubating it in their brood patch, a separation of feathers that allows direct contact between the egg and their body. The egg hatches 38-42 days later.
Magellanic penguins are native to coastal South America. Pink and Red, the newborn chick’s parents, were found exhausted on a Brazilian beach far away from breeding and feeding grounds. They were two of four penguins that were taken in to a Brazilian rehabilitation center before being moved to their permanent home at Point Defiance.
The four penguin couples were paired based on the Magellanic Penguin Species Survival Plan. These Plans began in 1981 when the Association of Zoos and Aquariums saw a need for captive breeding programs to save threatened and endangered species worldwide. It’s an extremely detailed plan that ensures high genetic diversity. High genetic diversity means better disease resistance, better response to changing environmental conditions, and higher reproductive success. These are all marks of healthy populations!
At this time, visitors can usually only glimpse the chick when the parents are feeding it their preferred food of regurgitated herring and capelin. Parents feed the chick every 2-3 days for 29 days, so you may have to make a couple of visits to see the newborn!