The puppy Pesto a king penguin, is only nine months old and weighs 22.5 kilos — he is already bigger than his parents in Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium in Australia . He is a “feather-covered walking and pooping machine,” and he is also a celebrity.
Photos of Pesto — who is 3 feet tall — with his parents have become viral on the internet sparking people’s interest in penguins.
Although many recognize adult penguins with their black and white feathers, King penguins are born covered in brown feathers . As soon as they learn to swim, they begin to change these feathers, a process called molting.
Penguins are also sexually monomorphic, meaning that it is not possible to tell the sex of a penguin by looking at it. To find out, keepers take a small blood sample from the penguin’s foot and send it to a lab for analysis.
Michaela Smale a penguin keeper at Sea Life since 2018, explains that normally the aquarium staff makes cupcakes and distributes them informally among employees to announce the sex of the chicks. But with Pesto, the announcement was made on social media.
In the viral video, a zookeeper cuts into a white cake to reveal a blue color inside — indicating it’s a male. Sea Life’s Instagram page has 25,000 followers. Watch the video below.
“I think he’ll always be a big guy,” Smale says.[Uma vez que ele faça a muda] He will shrink and lose a little weight, but he is already significantly taller than his father.”
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SEA LIFE Melbourne
(@sealifemelbourneaquarium)Pesto’s biological father, Blake, is one of the oldest and largest penguins in the aquarium . However, he is being raised by Tango and Hudson, younger penguins that keepers decided to try out as parents. Many of the 60 penguins have food-related names, such as Pudding, Whopper and Lamingtons.
Pesto eats about eight fish four times a day — more than 30 fish in total — twice what an adult penguin consumes. Since he is still a chick, he also receives extra food from his parents.
With all that food comes a lot of waste. Smale explains that penguins poop every 15 minutes — meaning keepers are always busy cleaning the enclosure for visitors.
In fact, adulthood is already approaching. Pesto has started to lose some of his baby feathers and will soon begin swimming lessons with his father.
“Sometimes they become very independent teenagers. So maybe he’s about to enter his ‘bad boy’ phase,” jokes Smale.
“I hope he keeps some of his peculiar personality and that we can follow his adventures as he integrates into the colony.”
The post Meet the baby penguin who had a gender reveal party and weighs more than 20 kg appeared first on CNN Brasil V&G.
Source: CNN Brasil
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