Zoo officials make changes to Humboldt penguins exhibit
Posted May 11, 2017 12:40 am.
Last Updated May 11, 2017 8:48 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s been six months since seven Humboldt penguins died at the Calgary Zoo and officials still are unsure of what spooked the birds, causing some of them to drown.
They’ve since turned their attention to preventing future tragedies given they may never have all the answers.
“We did a full investigation and that’s a normal thing for us,” said curator Dr. Malu Celli.
“Since the incident what we’ve done is look at all of our protocols so for anything, birds in isolation, quarantine, we have a number of steps that have to be taken,” she said. “Anything from extra lights, extra mats, to things that can facilitate them seeing around and having easier access to the pools, we’re looking into possibly modifying the pools, but for now it’s been a big change in protocols in how we manage the birds, how much capacity, how much penguins we can put in each room so things have changed and we have received penguins since this happened.”
Celli says they introduced two new Gentoos to the new population with these guidelines in place.
They’ve stopped short of having someone monitor the Penguin Plunge 24 hours a day in hopes this will prevent them from getting nervous and allow the birds some downtime.
“This has certainly been a learning curve for us and we’ve put a lot of things in place to try to reduce the risk as much as we can and try for something like this to never happen again,” she said.
Zoo officials say the penguins who lost mates have been adjusting quite well in the months since the ordeal.
The Calgary Zoo currently has 15 Humboldt penguins, four of them, are currently sitting on eggs.
