JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – I was practically giddy in February when I showed up at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens for a behind-the-scenes visit to Tuxedo Coast, the zoo’s penguin exhibit.
Full disclosure: I am obsessed with penguins. 🐧🐧🐧 My house at Christmas is completely decked out in penguin everything (a very small sampling below).
At work, I have a “penguin corner” on my desk and a penguin blanket in my drawer. I wear penguin sweaters, penguin jewelry, penguin socks, penguin pajamas. You get the picture.
I even have a tradition the week before Christmas of wearing a penguin sweater to work every day -- yes, I have that many.
Between you and me, I’ve been hoping for an excuse to talk my way behind the scenes with the penguins for a while now.
Celebrating World Penguin Day (April 25) was my “in.” Still, I almost couldn’t believe it when the zoo officials said yes!
(Shoutout to the amazing Emily Long at the Jacksonville Zoo for helping to make this happen!)
I actually made my visit on Feb. 20, and, of course, I wore a penguin sweater and penguin earrings just for the occasion. (What else?)
Feeding the penguins 🐟
Once Emily Long introduced me to the “other” Emily, Senior Bird Care Specialist Emily Bridges, I got a quick rundown on what the penguins eat. I mean, yes, it’s fish. But there are several kinds — and the penguins are actually pretty picky. (Who knew?)
Their favorites are the smaller silversides (pictured below). Bridges described those as the penguins’ “candy.” She said we’d be giving them those last to make sure they ate some of their other fish, like herring and capelin, first.
Wait, “we”? Yep, that’s right, I got to feed the penguins during my visit. (Honestly, it was so hard not to just put down the camera and run in to get started. But I managed to keep my cool, thankfully.)
Bridges had me put on thick black gloves and then she hoisted the buckets of fish and I filmed on my handheld camera as she opened the back door to the exhibit.
As soon as she brought the buckets to the edge of the water, the penguins jumped out and waddled over. First, we threw in some of the larger fish, and then it was time to hand-feed the medium-sized ones.
The trick for feeding the penguins is to offer the fish to them head first, Bridges said, but some like the fish’s belly on the right side and some like the belly on the left.
If they don’t take it, she said, just flip it over and try again.
I know -- it sounds easy. But it took me a few tries to get it right.
And even then, I learned a quick lesson: Watch your fingers! 🩹
The first penguin that gobbled down a fish I offered did it so fast that she kept going and nipped my finger.
“Ow!” I yelped, whipping my fingers out of the danger zone. (I was more surprised than anything. It didn’t really hurt.) Watch the video below to see for yourself.
Bridges said that the penguin, Mrs. Smith, also known as “Goodyear,” is missing one eye so sometimes she’ll bite things that aren’t food. (No hard feelings, Mrs. Smith. I would feed you again any time.)
And if you think “Mrs. Smith” or “Goodyear” are funny names, wait until you hear some of the others.
🔒Insiders: Want to know who all is related in Tuxedo Coast? Read this
All 29 penguins in the zoo’s colony have names, and a few, like “Goodyear,” have earned nicknames that the bird care specialists use instead.
Some of my favorites are “Naughty” (give you one guess where that came from), “Plankton,” Sharky and Turtle.
If you want to check out a penguin feeding at the zoo, visitors can watch the 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. feedings every day. It’s free with your zoo admission.
Watching the penguins zip through the water to snag the fish that are thrown in is pretty fun, especially if you’re little enough to watch from the observer window, like my nephew was in the photo above. (A couple of little girls were very entertained during my behind-the-scenes visit.)
I’ve been on their side of the glass many times to visit the penguins and introduced my nephew and nieces to Tuxedo Coast when they were little.
Fun fact: I actually met my husband at the Jacksonville Zoo on a church outing. I knew when he still wanted to talk to me after I freaked out over the penguins that he was a keeper. 😆
My friend Ruth Hoang captured the awesome photo below of me at Tuxedo Coast on the day I met my husband. (I love that I have this to remember that special day!)
Just to bring it full circle, about a year after we met, I married my now husband in the gardens at the Jacksonville Zoo.
You could say the zoo is a special place for us. ❤️
But back to my behind-the-scenes visit.
While I was feeding, I was also filming (I had a LOT of cleaning to do on the team camera later, and I’m not 100% sure the fishy smell didn’t linger — sorry, team!). At the same time, I was peppering Bridges with questions about the penguins, and I learned so much!
For one thing, Bridges said the penguins eat the fish whole because as a colony species, tearing up the fish would put them at risk of another penguin or other bird nearby swiping their catch.
She said the penguins have special soft spines inside their mouths that aren’t exactly teeth but help the penguin swallow the fish more easily because the spines hook into the fish’s scales and keep it in place as the penguin swallows. (This is why they tend to eat it head first!)
And if you do go watch a feeding and you see the penguins “shivering” on land after they eat — that’s actually a digestive function.
“If you look at a penguin skeleton, like the first third of their body is all neck,” Bridges said, “until you get down into the organs. (The fish has) kind of got a far way to go, and they’ll just kind of help push it down (by shivering or shaking),” Bridges said.
So don’t worry, it’s not because the exhibit is too cold for them.
Penguins in warm weather? ⛱️
In fact, I often hear people asking how the zoo keeps the penguins comfortable in the warm Florida weather.
What many people don’t know is that (despite what you see on “Happy Feet” — love that movie!) of the 18 species of penguins in the world, most live in relatively warm climates, like southern Africa, South America, New Zealand and Australia.
That includes the penguins at our zoo, which are Magellenic penguins native to South America and the Falkland Islands. They’re named for explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who spotted them off the tip of South America in 1520.
The Magellenic penguins live along the South American coastline from Brazil to the southern tip of the continent and then back up the west coast as far north as Peru. The climate in these areas ranges from temperate to arid, so the air temperature in our area isn’t that different, but the water temperature definitely tends to be colder in their natural habitat, Bridges explained.
That’s why the water temperature in Tuxedo Coast is kept between 50 and 60 degrees year-round. That helps the penguins cool down in warmer months and actually helps them warm up in the cooler months if they need to.
“We do artificially give them like fans and heaters,” Bridges said. “But normally their water is the best regulator for their body.”
She said another thing zoo visitors might see after feeding time is the penguins “preening.” That’s when they take care of their feathers to make sure they’re staying waterproof.
“They’ve got 70 feathers per square inch, so they’re pretty much in a giant wetsuit,” Bridges said. “The water usually doesn’t actually touch the skin on their body.”
She said their feet and the area around their faces are all that’s really exposed when they go swimming.
Mating season 🥚
Mating season is underway at the zoo, and it’s an exciting time for the bird care specialists (and for us journalists who can’t wait to share photos of the adorable new chicks!)
Of the 29 penguins in the Jacksonville Zoo’s colony, 22 are paired and will attempt to lay eggs during mating season. Bridges said they typically lay two eggs about four days apart and the incubation period is about 38 to 42 days. (That’s right, about 40 days instead of 40 weeks, wouldn’t that be nice? 🫄)
Bridges said it’s actually very difficult for penguin eggs to hatch in captivity. That’s why it was so exciting last year when four eggs successfully hatched -- the most the zoo has ever had in the same year.
And it was special for another reason too.
“It was a mom and daughter pair,” Bridges said. “So the mom had two (more) kids, and her daughter had two kids So now we’ve got a grandma and grandpa.”
The penguins will either use the igloo-like nesting boxes in the exhibit or they’ll use the nesting boxes at the back of the exhibit that looks like little cave openings. The doors for those are shut when it’s not mating season.
Because of the difficulty in hatching, the bird specialists will sometimes take the eggs from the nests and artificially incubate them if it looks like the parents are having trouble. When they do that, they replace it with a dummy egg, which is an old eggshell filled with plaster.
“So it looks like real life because it is their egg shape and everything,” Bridges said. “They normally don’t notice that they’re sitting on a fake egg. They’re just like, ‘Hey, why are you bothering me?’ And then they start incubating.”
When an artificially incubated egg successfully hatches, the bird care specialists pull another switcheroo.
“So normally, we’ll take the chick and we’ll have some of its egg shells that it hatched out in, and we’ll pull the dummy eggs and give them the chick,” Bridges explained. “And normally they don’t notice like ‘Hey, this wasn’t hatching and now it’s here.’ They’re just like, ‘Cool -- my baby!’”
But even after hatching, some of the pairs don’t make super great parents, so the bird care specialists keep an eye on the families and if they’re having trouble, they’ll switch the chick to another pair who will foster raise it.
“If we’re seeing the parents either be aggressive or if they’re not taking care of it very well, then we can give them to foster parents. So out of our four last year, two of them were foster raised and two were biologically raised,” Bridges said.
The zoo’s only hand-raised penguin is CJ who you might have seen visit our News4JAX studios a few times.
WATCH: I shared more about my love of penguins and my zoo visit on The Morning Show:
CJ was the first penguin to hatch at the zoo.
“His parents were first-time parents and ended up abandoning him, not taking care of him,” Bridges said. “So, at that point, we didn’t know who would be good foster parents, so the keepers hand raised him, which is why he’s so friendly and likes to hang out with us.”
He even tried to follow us through the door when we were leaving the exhibit. (I should have tried to sneak him out! 😉)
Bridges said the penguins are fully grown — between 6 and 14 pounds — when they’re about 3 months old, but they don’t start pairing up for a few years.
Typically, females are ready to pair up at around 3 or 4 years old, and the males are ready at around 4 to 5 years old. (Yes, penguin females also mature faster than males, ladies. 🤷🏻♀️)
Endangered penguins ⚠️
Since it’s World Penguin Day, I think it’s important to shine a light on the difficulties penguins are having in the wild.
According to penguinsinternational.org, the Magellenic penguin population is decreasing, but they are considered “near threatened” because there are still 1.5 million breeding pairs.
Bridges explained that typically penguins found at zoos will either be Magellenic, like ours, or African, which closely resemble Magellenic penguins as they’re both from the “banded” penguin group (basically they have stripe patterns around their heads and chests).
African penguins, on the other hand, are on the endangered list with only 15,000 breeding pairs left in the wild.
Bridges said whenever the zoo has fundraisers to help with penguin populations, it’s typically to benefit the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, which has a major focus on saving the endangered African penguins.
Many species of penguins are seeing decreasing numbers in the wild, but along with African penguins, among the most endangered are the Erect-crested, Galapagos, Northern Rockhopper and Yellow-eyed species. Most other penguin species are considered either vulnerable or near threatened, like the Magellenic penguins.
Maybe not so surprisingly, humans are one of the biggest threats to penguin populations from habitat loss to pollution to reduced food availability from commercial fishing.
Habitat loss has had an especially devastating effect on the African penguins.
Bridges explained that in the 1900s, people realized that penguin feces is rich in minerals and makes an incredible plant fertilizer. But humans overharvested the soil so much in their habitat (is anyone surprised?) that the African penguins, a burrowing species, lost most of their natural nesting sites.
“So they’re nesting out in the open, which can cause a lot of heat stress and vulnerability to predators,” Bridges said.
One of the conservation efforts the Jacksonville Zoo supported, called Invest in the Nest, involved placing artificial nest boxes in the wild so the African penguins can breed safely.
During mating season at the Zoo, you’ll see a couple of those nest boxes in Tuxedo Coast.
“They look like a little white igloo,” Bridges said. “But a lot of engineering goes into them to help keep the airflow and air circulation in there to keep them cool. But our guys like them just as well as their other nesting crates.”
Family fun 🐧🐧
In the wild, penguins live around 20 years, but in captivity, they can live as long as 38 years. The two oldest penguins in the Jacksonville Zoo’s colony — Maynard and Troy (or “Naughty”) — are both 21 years old.
“You can’t really tell that they’re any older than the other ones,” Bridges said.
“Naughty,” who’s paired with “Plankton” (Victoria) has three children in the colony — Sharky, Hammy and Micro — and raised one foster chick, Chesterfield.
Maynard is paired with “Goodyear” (the finger nipper), and they foster raised Pietro last year.
The bird care specialists definitely have a little fun when it comes to naming the chicks. The families have themes.
For instance, Lola, the zoo’s only grandma, is mom to “Banner” (Juliette), Marvel, Wanda and Pietro. “Banner” is paired with Friend and they have two chicks, Bruce and Phoebe. You get the idea.
🔒Insiders: Want to know how to tell who’s who at Tuxedo Coast? Read this
Bridges said sometimes you’ll hear the pairs calling to each other in the exhibit. She calls it their locator call. It’s almost like they’re playing Marco Polo.
“Sometimes if one like repeats calling, it’s because his mate’s not answering him,” Bridges said. “I’ve found a lot of the times the females are like, ‘Sometimes I’ll answer you, sometimes I won’t.’”
Sound familiar guys? Haha, just kidding.
Bridges said she knows the penguins are a favorite for many zoo visitors.
“They are very cute, and I think the waddle draws a lot of people in too,” Bridges said, laughing. “They’re a great animal, so there’s not much not to love about them.”
Or to be obsessed about. 😊