Four brand new Little Penguins have been unveiled at Canberra’s National Zoo & Aquarium this week to coincide with National Penguin Day today, Saturday 20 January.

The chicks were born at the Zoo in October 2023 and have been settling into their new home very well before being introduced to the public.

Zoo keeper, Jemma Walsh, spoke with media about the new arrivals.

Can you tell us a little bit about the newest additions to the zoo?

Yeah, we’re super excited to announce the arrival of four penguin chicks. They were born here at the end of October 2023. So, kept a little secret for a little while, just as they’ve been getting their feet and finding their flippers in the water.

How have they been while growing up?

Yeah, it’s really exciting to be able to watch them grow. So, for five weeks, they were raised with their parents, so their parents did a really good job. And from five weeks, we actually got the privilege of helping to raise them. So, we’d like to teach them to swim, teach them to eat – everything like that. So, as they lost their very cute fluffy down feathers, they then moved into the big pond with the adults.

And how did mum and dad go?

Mum and dad are perfectly fine, it’s very normal out in the wild for them to raise their chicks and then say ‘good luck in the future, we’ll see you around’. So, it’s really nice to be able to bring them back into the big group and then watch them as a group of 16 Little Penguins now.

Mum and dad have they also been raised here at the zoo. So, mum and dad have been here for quite a while. And so we’ve actually got two different sets of penguin chicks with two different sets of parents. So it’s really good for the genetic pool here too, for us to be able to contribute to future breeding programs.

Out in the wild, where would we normally find these sorts of penguins?

These guys are a Little Penguin. They are traditionally an Australian species, they can be found across New Zealand as well, primarily around sort of southern Victoria up into New South Wales.

And it’s Penguin Awareness Day on 20 January. What are the biggest issues they face?

I guess the struggles [they] are facing out in the wild are climate change and overfishing – they’re the two main threats.

But then we’re also looking at things like plastic bags and rubbish going into our waterways.

So it’s a really good chance for us to highlight that and really bring attention to what we need to be doing to save our oceans to then save our chicks.

What sort of work would you like to see done?

For us here at the Zoo, it’s all about supporting and educating people, making sure a big thing that we say is ‘bubbles, not balloons’. If you’re going anywhere, you don’t want to create waste. Crack your bubble wand instead of bringing all your balloons and letting them go into your waterways.

Making sure that we are sustainably sourcing our fish. Not buying things that aren’t sustainably sourced as well is a really a big one for us.

Will these four little ones stay here or will they go to other zoos for breeding program?

It will depend. Currently, they will stay here for now.

The way we can tell them apart from the big group, they’re a little bit smaller, a little bit lighter in colour, got a little bit of a shorter beak than the adults as well. So, they will stay here for a little bit longer.

And then, who knows, it all depends on the regional breeding program. We’re hopeful that our four will grow up and do amazing things for the future of breeding programs.

Are penguin population numbers dwindling, and if so, by how much?

It depends on each individual species, how much they are declining, but definitely, they’re not rising.

Obviously, we’ve got the threats of things like feral cats, dogs, foxes… So it’s all about protecting them as much as we can.

Any standout personalities among the penguins?

Yes, all of our penguins are very niche. So we’ve got 16 Little Penguins now. And some of them we definitely know just from the way they interact with us; things like Snoop – he can be very cheeky. He comes and sits up on the rock next to us waiting for fish. TK is just that little sweetheart. Monte, I say affectionately, is a bit of a T-Rex. He thoroughly enjoys trying to get our fingers as well, which is a bit fun. But the other three newbies are all really cute, really, really sweet penguins, which is really nice.

Any fun games or interactions designed to engage penguins?

Yeah, we do a lot of enrichment with the penguins every day. I think my favorite, probably, is playing classical music for them. Interestingly, they all will stand and listen, essentially. So enrichment is a massive thing that we do here. We’ve done bubbles. We’ve done mirrors. We’ve done bells. But yeah, classical music is my favourite.

What are the names of the four newbies?

So yes, we’ve got four little penguins; this litter of penguins has actually been named after biscuits. So we’ve got Oreo, Monte, McVities and Jatz. Our other litter was actually named after rappers. So we have Jay Z and LL Cool J, and 360. So, adding a little bit more of a different theme to the classroom.