hey guys welcome to another Home Safari at the Cincinnati Zoo my name's Cody the head
keeper's here at the Wings of Wonder bird house I'm inside the polar exhibit we're inside with 3 species of penguins
cool stuff pushing this guy right here this is probably my favorite bird he's
what I like to call a bro he is named Burger he is a king penguin
they've got really awesome filtered water so it's really clean
in here maybe must have healthcare in mind
so these guys have twice the life expectancy so Burger's kind of our elder
statesman of the exhibit we also have a few of our Magallanic Penguins
hanging out with us too this is Ben, Jerry and then we
also have Rock Hoppers in here
this one's hopping that so again three species in this exhibit
we also have two other penguin species here at the zoo we have the little
penguins which is also called the fairy penguin from Australia New Zealand
We also have the African penguin
we're getting ready to start our breeding season if you look at our King penguins over here
some of the king penguins looking a little shaggy compared to the others so
the two on the farthest let me introduce you to our Kings so the Kings are the
big ones in the exhibits so all the way on the far side all the way furthest
away from us that's Larry right beside Larry we're in a green bracelet as BB then you got Stacy Martin Luther
it's really loud in here again rockhoppers now those two have kind of
picked their little spot over there
yes so we're going through I'm not going to talk over that yeah so here we go
over on the far side those birds are going through molt all of our kings are
going into molt so basically they eat a bunch of food their bodyweight swells
up they get really really large in their their new feathers grow underneath the
old ones giving those two on the far side given that shaggy looking
appearance so those are all the old feathers they're basically falling out
and the new feather comes in underneath it that is what we call a catastrophic
molt whereas other bird species like Bubba over here
those birds dropping feathers all the time penguins do it in a two week time period
it's like they know we're filming in here they're like let's just be loud let
go really really cool those we're going through molt this is that one of the
beginning stages of our breeding season for our Kings so after the Kings go
through molt they're going to go right into breeding season which we're going
to have a fun activity for you guys at home that check the link at the end of
this episode to check that activity out talk a little bit more about it here in
a few but really really cool stuff with the breeding season coming up we've
already started seeing Birds pairing up one of the things I'm excited for with
those two birds on the far side they're historic together so that's a really
really good news for us they're going to pair up
hopefully reproduce again this year it's been a few years since we've got a king
chick so we're all really excited here in the bird house I see some of the rock
coppers over there moving around those guys they're gonna be going to the
breeding season soon the guys over there making a ton of racket those two are a
historic pair for us they've got a nice little site over there I might try to
discourage that I don't really like that site it's down low on the ground the
Kings are gonna walk by and there's a little bit of altercation so speaking of
altercation it gets even louder than this hard to believe but yeah it's
really stressful during breeding season I like to equate it to it's as stressful
was like Days of Our Lives and the TV show it's breeding season everybody's a
little edgy with everybody there's lots of drama we have to come in and kind of
monitor everything and all the birds try to beat us up as well because they all
think we're trying to steal their girlfriends and that's not what we do
here we're not stealing anybody's girlfriend so yeah if you guys have
questions feel free to shoot them out we'll do our best to get to those
questions sometimes there's an awful lot of them and it's kind of hard to go
through all but yeah there's a lot of really good stuff going on again the
three species in here Kings being the big ones
rockhoppers kind of hanging out above them hopefully this rockhopperr jumps
the gap there just to show you that jumping ability
cool and of course now they're going to turn around excellent question
penguins do have knees and they are right where you think they are up in the
body so what you're seeing down low
it's really loud in here I love it I think it's great
are penguins as loud as truck horns yeah I think so we you know the funny thing in here we
do have hearing protection guidelines as you can see it's a really really loud if
we're in here for an extended period of time
one of our safety things as to wear earplugs what do penguins eat great
question so here at the zoo we feed 11 different types of fish some
of the stuff eating out in this exhibit a fish called silversides feeding out
herring or feeding out atlantic herring and cod bait herring we sometimes feed
out capelin we sometimes feed off mackerel we also feed out trout which is
a new fish for us for this really high in fat that's the big thing thing was
need they need a very high fat diet and because they're spending a lot of time
swimming they're burning a lot of calories in the water so they need a
lots and lots of calories every day do penguins have tongues penguins do have
tongues and one of the crazy things about penguins tongues their tongues have barbs
on them
with their tongues I was hoping he would kind of open his mouth a little bit
because he just wants to kind of hang out with us he wants to breathe my leg
that's fine that's special but their tongues they had all these tiny little
barbs in their tongue also on the roof of their mouth and basically that acts
like a fishhook when they bite into a fish and the fish tries to back out of
their mouth goes barb off towards the back of the throat and that basically
makes sure that the fish does not get away from them this is Jerry he's
looking really pretty right now look at he's like strutting around like he owns
the place do they fly they do not fly I like to say they fly underwater
the bones in their flippers and their wings that keeps them
from being able to fold them all the way up against their body but it does give
them a nice stable platform so they're very very efficient the water you look
at their body shape this is what we call fusiform so your round in the middle
your chambered at the head you're tapered at the tail basically it's kind
of like a football so a football is aerodynamic a penguin is what we call
hydrodynamic because they're spending all that time in the water
how long can they be in the water how long in the water soak in their natural
habitats they would spend about 75 percent of their lifetime swimming
live fish in the pool this time of the day they're kind of like slowing down
but they do spend a lot of time in the water when it comes to swimming
underwater most penguins spend about 30 seconds to two minutes in the top thanks
to the water
Hey wanna go for a swim Hey look at the enrichment over here
ready he's like another tag yeah so if you look so he's got this nice yellow
bracelet if you look all of our other birds in the exhibit you'll notice
everybody has a bracelet that is just an identification tag for us kind of like a
name tag so if you look everybody's got this nice nametag said that lets me know
who's who so every single bird that you see has
that that little plastic zip tie and then also they each have their own
individual number I can go to our computer system and bring up all the
information about each one of these animals every animal has their own
medical file every animal has their own file of everything that we observed
throughout our day so a lot of being a zookeeper is basically just taking notes
and doing paperwork one of the glamorous sides of our job that people don't even
think about we hose a lot of poop and we take a lot of notes so a lot of good
stuff being a zookeeper but again everybody individually
and that's how we know who's who that's going to depend on the species so king
penguins can go up to 20 years in their natural habitat these little rock operas
about 10 to 12 in their natural habitat the cool thing though is everybody in a
zoo setting if you're a penguin can double their natural life expectancy so
again our boy Burger over here that's standing high behind you guys Burger
here is 37 so he is almost doubled his actual life expectancy he's got a pretty
sweet gig going on here at the zoo or is that great to dish it out yeah it's a
pretty comfortable life living at the zoo is very stress free
I think Burger's my favorite penguin that Jerry's like all in your lap right now
what about their name so get this guy's name Burger King we have Larry BB Coretta Scott
and Martin Luther
I bet most people on there don't know who Stacy King is I would give you
a virtual high five if you know who Stacy King is the black banded king
penguin standing right in the middle probably the tallest one standing over
there Stacy king I named her and it's a pretty interesting King name if
anybody's a basketball fan out there
wackiest personality I would say one of our rockhoppers I'm trying to see where he's at
but the guy at the food plate over there we do have a food station we were there that
- how many kinds of penguins do you have do we have here at the zoo we are really
lucky here in Cincinnati we have five species total out of the 17 so the three
that are in here again the Magellanic King and the Rockhopper then also the little
blues and the African penguins so in this exhibit is just the three eating
those brand new exhibits built right now so hopefully those open this summer and
right now we're still on track for that but yeah a lot of uncertainty with that
you're still around so really excited for the for those new exhibits
when when penguins have an egg who takes care of the egg
so with all penguin species with the exception of the emperor penguin all
Penguin species when it comes to egg care males and females both take care of the
egg with the emperor penguin that is the only species that the male does the
entire incubation so with our king penguins they are very similar to
Emperor's they look very very close they're closely related same genus
what they do they don't build a nest just like it refers they do everything
on their feet which again you click the link at the end of this Home Safari
or homework for you guys is to do this awesome penguin activity where you're
going to pretend that you're incubating today so you're going to take any sort
of item that you have like a football or a pillow or stuffed animal any sort of
cool thing you're going to try to incubate that on your feet again the
description is in the link so check that out it's going to be really cool and
we're super excited to see videos and photos from you guys trying to recreate
that and see who's a good incubator out there and who's not so yeah that's going
to be happening the breeding season in here is going to be happening once
everybody goes to molt so those two that are farther along than everybody else
those are the two that we want to mate everybody the same timeframe but
sometimes when they molt just a little bit off they start breeding season without each other those two have reproduced in the past for us
liked them to reproduce again at the exact same time so we get
really excited last year was a good year for us we had three eggs laid to this
exhibit for our Kings we had three eggs laid one of which was fertile two were infertile
but still three eggs for us was a big deal it's been a while since we've had a king chick
Bailey wants to know if it's normal for us several different species to live
together yeah that's a great question so cool thing about our exhibit is
we are showcasing this pretty wide range of area
a sub Antarctic island off the coast of South America is what we're recreating down off the coast
of South America so all of these species could be traveling the same natural
habitat but it would be just a little different parts of that habitat the kings
would be on your flat rockier areas rockhoppers up on the cliffs in the
rocky spaces so great question you see Burger again and again he's he's
my favorite bird he's a pretty cool guy he's kind of earned the right to do
whatever he wants to be exhibit since he's 37 again use the oldest king
penguin in North America how do you penguins know how to be their parents
so the interesting thing with penguins is a lot of times they don't
know who their parents are there isn't a family structure with penguins
so the Penguins that the parents will raise the baby the baby goes out to sea
for its first time they will come back to the same area but they don't
recognize their parents they don't have any sort of like family reunion in their
natural habitat so they even here there's not really any sort of like
family grouping it's just a colony grouping so everybody wants to be him
but there isn't any sort of like family structure that you can see and like say
some of the animated movies do penguins have teeth penguins do not have teeth
because penguins are birds and birds do not have teeth do penguins hold their
breath underwater they do hold their breath just like we do yeah so again
penguins are holding their breath on average about 30 seconds the longest
recorded penguin dive was around 21 minutes that was an emperor penguin that's way
longer than us humans good questions I like it how do you know if an egg is
fertile so one of the things we do here in the zoo we we know who's really good
at incubating and who is not sometimes we have to pull the eggs out
from underneath the parents and give them a fake egg and then we can take the
egg down to our bird house incubation room and we have a thing that's called a
Candler it's basically a super bright flashlight once the egg has passed a
certain certain length of time and incubation you can see if this bird or
not I just did some handling this morning on some other eggs so a lot
of stuff going on here at the Zoo alright so again guys definitely click the link
and check out the activity your homework for this Home Safari and keep tuning
in again every day at 3 o'clock to see these other Home Safaris we've got a lot
of animals here at the zoo so there's a lot of cool activities coming your way
so definitely check it out and thanks for hanging out with us checking out all
these awesome penguins and you guys all good to each other out there have a
great day