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Penguins on the Go

--By Ritu Upadhyay

Until recently, life for the Magellanic penguins at California's San Francisco Zoo has been pretty easy. They were hand-fed fresh fish. They could bask in the sun all day, take naps in their cozy burrows and occasionally have a quick dip in their man-made pond at the zoo's Penguin Island exhibit. But something curious happened after six new birds from Sea World in Ohio joined the flock on December 24. All the penguins jumped into the pond and began swimming in circles!

The marathon has been going on every day for a month. The birds break only to eat and sleep. The zoo's penguin keeper, Jane Tollini, has never seen anything like it. "There's nothing I can do to stop them!" she told TFK.

Animal behavior experts believe the penguins are just doing what they would normally do in the wild. Every winter, Magellanic penguins make a 2,000-mile migration along the eastern coast of South America. The penguins in Ohio mimicked the long swim every year. They started doing the same thing when they arrived in San Francisco, and the local birds followed them! "Somehow they convinced my birds that migration is the way to go," says Tollini.

To re-create the full migration would take 26,400 laps around the pool. Tollini says her birds are pretty out of shape, and she doubts they will finish the trip. But they seem determined to rack up as many miles as they can. When the pool was drained for cleaning last week, the penguins jumped in and just walked around on the bottom.

Tollini hopes that they will get tired by Valentine's Day, which falls around mating time. "We want babies this year!"

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