20 March 2024
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Tanganyika Wildlife Park Director Mike Fouts brought in a 6-month-old baby African penguin to KSN’s Wild Side Wednesday afternoon.
Tanganyika has a colony of African penguins. This is the second one born this year.
“They are an endangered species, so you know, obviously any time that we can have successful births, manage care otherwise is obviously a big win,” said Fouts.
He says there are more penguins on eggs.
Fouts says the only way to tell if a penguin is a boy or a girl is to do a blood test.
“Usually, we’ll do that a couple of months in, send off to the lab, and they’ll test the blood, and they’ll tell us if it’s a boy or girl,” said Fouts.
Until the Park knows if a penguin is a boy or a girl, they will call it by the color of the bands on its arm, and in this case, the baby penguin is called “Black Pink.”
“Eventually, they’ll have a unique chest, like the spots on their chest will be unique and the keepers can identify them that way,” said Fouts.
He says the penguin chick he brought in is almost full-grown.
“When they’re first born, they’re about the size, you know they’ll fit in your hand, and then they gain about 10% of their body weight a day. So about two months, they’re full-grown,” said Fouts.
The two penguin chicks are currently behind the scenes.
“You can kind of see they’re starting to get a little bit of their juvenile feathers, their swim feathers on there, but once they lose all this fluffy down, they’ll have their swim feathers, and they’ll be out on exhibit at that time,” said Fouts.
Tanganyika is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the spring season. Tickets can be bought online. For a chance to get up close and personal with the penguins, check out the Park’s wildly different experiences.