Penguins Have Some Hubble Bubble Fun

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/reuvenim/3341321500/

Penguins Have Some Hubble Bubble Fun

Keeping over 200 playful and intelligent penguins entertained can be a challenge, but keepers at Edinburgh Zoo are experts at penguin enrichment.

This week they treated the penguin colony to a shower of bubbles from the popular bubble making machine.

Bird Section Team Leader Colin Oulton said: “Penguins are inquisitive and intelligent birds, so it is important we offer them a variety of enrichment. We have a number of ways of providing enrichment, but the bubble machine always gets a good response. All three of our penguin species will chase the bubbles and try to catch them in their beaks.”

“Other ways of providing enrichment include scattering their food across the pool which encourages the penguins to catch food as they would in the wild. We also hang up CD’s which scatter patterns of light into the enclosure which they show great interest in, and during the winter we pile up snow for them to investigate.”

“During a snowfall our penguins will chase snowflakes and try to catch them, in much the same way as they do with the bubbles.”

Edinburgh Zoo is home to the largest outdoor penguin pool in Europe and the resident penguin colony includes three varieties of penguins—Kings, Rockhoppers and Gentoos.

Rockhopper penguins are classed as endangered on the IUCN Red List following a rapid decline in the wild population, meaning this species faces a high risk of extinction. Gentoo penguins are also under pressure from climate change, over fishing, marine pollution and habitat loss.

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An Important Discovery Overlooked

BBC discovers flying penguins

British broadcaster the BBC has made one of the most important discoveries in the history of ornithology - penguins that can fly.

The BBC, famed for its groundbreaking natural history documentaries, has captured remarkable footage of the flying penguins, known as Adélie penguins, as part of a new series to be titled 'Miracles of Evolution'.

The discovery was made while filming on King George Island, some 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands.

Some of the birds were been fitted with trackers by a team of ornithologists travelling with the BBC crew to monitor their migration path in order to better understand how these amazing birds had gone undiscovered for so long.

Ornithologists found the penguin’s migration path comes within 20 kilometres of Dubai. They said the penguins flew at much higher altitudes as they crossed desert regions because of the high temperatures, which could explain why the birds had not been sighted.

From Dubai the birds fly east over India to the tropical islands of Southeast Asia, where the BBC has footage of them nesting in the rainforest.



"We'd been watching the penguins and filming them for days, without a hint of what was to come," says the BBC presenter.

"But then the weather took a turn for the worse. It was quite amazing. Rather than getting together in a huddle to protect themselves from the cold, they did something quite unexpected, that no other penguins can do.

"The film reveals nature's stunning glory in exciting and unexpected ways, so much so that it defies belief.

"Not only does it create a vivid and emotional experience for the viewer, it also illustrates just how bold and simple Darwin's idea of natural selection was."

The BBC released the footage on

Read Full Story HERE

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