A “fearless” young Humboldt penguin has officially entered the habitat.
Robin, a female juvenile penguin, is the only Humboldt penguin to hatch at the Brookfield Zoo this year. She hatched July 7 to first-time parents Sofi and Klaus.
“She's a tenacious little girl,” said Amanda Mansfield, senior animal care specialist at the zoo. “She's going to be a wonderful ambassador for her wild counterparts.”
Robin was moved as an egg and placed with foster parents Cara and Popero, who have successfully raised chicks in the past, according to Mansfield. She spent her first three weeks under their care before zoo experts stepped in to help raise her.
But Robin is different from other chicks, said Mansfield.
Penguin chicks are born covered in down feathers that make swimming difficult for the first few months. But Robin showed an interest in getting into the water at a very young age.
“Penguins are going to instinctually know how to swim, but not until a certain milestone,” Mansfield said. “She's definitely jumped the milestones a lot faster than we anticipated her to do.”
Still sporting a few down feathers, Robin was spotted swimming through the Humboldt penguin habitat Friday morning.
Robin joined the colony last week and is still learning to make friends, said Mansfield.
“Her job right now is to find her place where she's comfortable and how to interact and communicate with the other penguins,” she said. “She’s doing really well.”
She was poked by a couple of the older penguins, but Mansfield said that was “normal penguin communication.”
Brookfield Zoo is home to 24 Humboldt penguins, a species native to the rocky Pacific coast and offshore islands of Peru and Chile.
The zoo also supports conservation efforts to protect wild Humboldt penguins, working closely with Punta San Juan, a protected rocky peninsula and wildlife reserve in Peru’s southern Ica region.
While some zoo animals are named with input from staff or the public, Robin was named in honor of someone special to the zoo.
Brookfield Zoo was the first zoo in the world to be accredited by the American Humane Society for the care and welfare of its animals.
During a recent visit to the zoo, Robin Ganzert, president and CEO of AHS, met the young penguin. As animal care specialists shared details about the chick, they discovered that Ganzert and Robin share the same birthday. It was only right to name the chick after Ganzert, said Mansfield.
The penguins are a popular attraction among zoo visitors, Mansfield said. Guests can watch them swim and waddle through their habitat, and those who arrive at the right time may even catch animal care specialists feeding them.
But a few of them will soon become movie stars.
The penguins will also appear in an upcoming holiday movie filmed at Brookfield Zoo. The zoo served as the primary filming location for “Christmas at the Zoo,” which premieres on Tubi Nov. 10.
