Jurong Bird Park is now home to three King penguin chicks, which hatched over three weeks at the park’s Breeding and Research Centre earlier this year. The first newcomers of their kind to be welcomed since Maru in 2017, Percy, Brix, and Arlo were artificially incubated for a better chance of a successful hatching, and introduced to the rest of the colony after several months spent with their human caregivers.
Clocking just over 200g each on the scales when they first came into the world, the penguin chicks, now weighing about 7kg to 10kg, are on a diet of herring and capelin three meals a day. Their species are the second largest of the penguins in the world, second only to the Emperor penguin, and are known to weigh up to 15kg and live up to 30 years under human care.
You can spot them at the indoor Penguin Coast, but they’ll be behind corrals, as they won’t be able to swim until they have their adult plumage, and the moulting process can last up to nine months. The wildlife park now has a total of 17 King penguins, alongside its other five species of penguins: African, Gentoo, Humboldt, Macaroni, and the Rockhopper.
Watch the clip below to see the penguins join their colony.
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