MvB is such a tease. He provided only one new penguin photo this morning (and a couple old vids) when he knows full well that will only serve to whet one’s appetite. And so THE PEOPLE DEMAND MORE.
I direct your attention to the gallery for an additional nine new baby penguin photos you won’t see anywhere else. That’s right, The SunBreak has nine more NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN BREAKING NEWZ photos of the Woodland Park Zoo’s new penguin chicks at their first weigh-in! (9 oz. and 11 oz., if you must know.) No upskirts. Not that it matters–the gender of the hatchlings has yet to be determined.
Who's all cuddly? Who's all cuddly? (Photo: Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo)
If the Woodland Park Zoo wanted Seattle to go, “Awwwww!” en masse, they probably succeeded when they sent out this picture of a penguin hatchling getting the Pillsbury Doughboy treatment [UPDATE: Whoops. Old picture. In this year’s shot, a hatchling gets the Tupperware treatment]. Despite fluffy appearances, plenty of behind-the-scenes drama is involved:
The first chick hatched on April 3 to 4-year-old mother Sardinia and 9-year-old father Groucho. During the hatching of the first egg, the pair’s second egg was rejected by the parents. Staff relocated it under a pair of foster parents where it proceeded to hatch a couple of days later.
Whew! The Zoo expects four more eggs (Four more eggs! Four more eggs!) to hatch soon, between April 16 and 26.
All the chicks will grow up out of the limelight–you won’t be able to see them until sometime later this summer at the zoo’s Humboldt Penguin exhibit. All the cooing and clucking is serious zoo business, though–Humboldts are an endangered species, as you’ll hear in the video below, and the zoo is involved in a species survival plan to help boost their cute widdle numbers.
This video shows penguin chicks kicking it in their private pool, just before the age they are transferred to the public exhibit:
You never know quite what you’re going to get when you start perusing our Flickr pool. With over 5,600 photos from some of Seattle’s most talented Flickr-ites, it’s usually something good. This time, we drop the word “penguin” into the mix and see what develops. Sure, a trip to the zoo, but also a few other encounters you may not have been expecting. That’s Jeff Blucher’s hungry little guy in the thumbnail.
