New addition at International Antarctic Centre
NZPA/Martin Hunter | 21 October 2008 04:46pm
Fats, Zane and the International Antarctic Centre showed off their new baby today, the first little blue penguin to be born at the Christchurch centre.
Now two weeks old, the unnamed penguin was ushered into the news media spotlight today.
While not the first of the world's smallest penguin species to be born in captivity, it was the first hatched at Penguin Encounter since it opened two years ago.
By penguin standards Fats, 16, and Zane, 12, are elderly parents. In the wild little blue penguins live about seven to eight years.
The love birds transferred to Christchurch from Marineland in Napier, and sat on two eggs in a cabbage tree nest for 36 days, taking turns.
Fats, the father, was described unflatteringly as the fattest and laziest penguin at the centre, while Zane was thought to be a male -- until he laid an egg.
