Terrified baby penguin given first swimming lesson

Zoo keepers had to teach a baby penguin who did not want to swim how to stay afloat. The penguin Chudi, hatched three-months-ago in a zoo in the central Russian city of Krasnoyarsk, had worried keepers because despite watching the rest of his family plunging into the water, he was clearly too scared to take the plunge himself.



So after sealing him off from the rest of the penguins, two keepers became swimming instructors to teach the penguin how to swim. And initially although clearly terrified about the water, when he was finally thrown in at the deep end he seemed to enjoy himself, and although his swimming style left something to be desired, he decided not to swim straight back to shore and splashed around before finally tiring and making for the safety of the nearby rocks.



The penguin chick which was hatched in an incubator at Royev Ruchey Zoo in the Siberian city is from the only species that lives in Africa and is therefore more suited to the hot southern hemisphere weather, meaning that he and his relatives have to spend the winter cooped up in a heated room. The hatching of the chick was hailed as a sensation as it was the first time an African penguin threatened with extinction had been born in a Russian zoo.


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A zoo spokesman said: "At first he couldn't do anything for himself, not even lift his head and his eyes were shut. We had to keep him in a special heated chamber so he could build up his strength and growth while feeding him on minced fish." African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) are monogamous birds that mate for life, and in the summer Chudi's parents Marfa and Lenya started building a nest in the outdoor enclosure, laying a single egg that because of the weather was put in an incubator.