An important rule for anyone shipped wrecked or stranded on a deserted island is "no matter how thirsty you get DON'T DRINK THE SALT WATER." This is important for people because drinking salt water will actually dehydrate us.

Luckily for penguins that rule does not apply. Penguins have little to no access to fresh water and ingest salt water from the ocean while they are eating fish. To prevent them from getting dehydrated they have special salt glands located behind their eyes that can filter out the excess salt from their bloodstream. The salt then drips down their beak and drips out the nares (nostrils). As the penguins exhale or shake their heads the salt flies out. It sort of looks like they are sneezing, but they are actually expelling salt.

The next time you are at the Aquarium watch the penguins closely, especially after they have eaten, to see if you can see them expelling the salt. In the mean time check out this video of some of our penguins demonstrating the "salt sneeze."

Penguins spend a lot of their time combing and fluffing their feathers, or preening. That's especially true when the penguins are molting! (Find everything you'd want to know about molting here, here and here.) See preening in action here in this quick video of a rockhopper penguin during its molt. Notice the crisp new feathers coming in under the few fluffy, old feathers!



- Andrea

This is Phillip. She is a little blue penguin with a red bracelet on her right wing. Phillip was born on January 3, 1997, at the Melbourne Zoo in Australia. She came to the Aquarium in July of 1997.


Phillip

Phillip is named after Phillip Island. Phillip Island is located off the south coast of Australia just 140 km (about 85 miles) away from Melbourne.


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Phillip Island is known for its "penguin parade". (Learn more about the penguin parade in this guest post from Peter Dann with the Phillip Island Nature Park!) Little blue penguins naturally will leave their burrows before sunrise to spend the day at sea foraging for food as the cover of darkness keeps them safe from land predators. As they return to their burrows at sunset, tourist at Phillip Island watch the hundreds or thousands of little blue penguins as they emerge from the surf and waddle across the beach back to their burrows. The Phillip Island Nature Park has set up designated viewing areas so tourist can get a once in a lifetime experience with no disruptions to the penguins and their breeding areas.






Penguin parade photos courtesy Phillip Island Nature Park

Phillip is one of our more successful little blue breeding females and has raised three chicks here at the Aquarium: Gur-Roo-Mul II, Lillico and Kororaa. You can find Phillip along with her offspring "parading" around the little blue penguin island at the Aquarium!

- Andrea

This southern rockhopper penguin is Tussock. She has a yellow and black bracelet on her right wing (which indicates that she's a female) and was born December 6, 2006 at SeaWorld in Orlando.


Tussock

She and six other rockhoppers joined the New England Aquarium colony in November of 2009. (Learn more about her journey here and see how the resident rockhoppers welcomed the new ladies here!)

Tussock is named after a type of grass found on many rockhopper breeding islands. Tussock grass, also known as bunch grass, is well suited to harsh environments. Unlike the grass in your front yard, tussock grass is not very pleasant to walk through. It is a tall, hardy grass that grows in dense clumps. Nesting within the grass gives the rockhopper penguins protection from both land and air predators as well as the elements. In fact gentoo penguins were once referred to as tussock penguins for their habit of nesting in tussock grass.



Take a look at these photos of rockhoppers nesting among the tussock grass taken by Caitlin while she was counting rockhopper penguins on islands off the tip of Chile.


Rockhopper penguins nesting in tussock


Look closely in this picture and you can see a person standing waist deep in the thick tussock grass.


In this photo you can see little paths worn away in the tussock grass from the rockhoppers traveling from the shoreline to their nests.

Click here to read more about Caitlin's adventure in South America.

- Andrea

This is Sinclair II. He is a male African penguin with a yellow bracelet on his left wing. His parents are Benguela III and Bird and he was born here at the Aquarium on July 10, 2007.



Sinclair is named after an African penguin breeding island off the coast of Namibia. It is located only 100 meters (just over 100 yards) off shore and is only 3 kilometers (about 1.9 miles) away from Plumpudding Island. Sinclair is Namibia's southernmost seabird breeding island.


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In addition to seabirds, Sinclair Island also has a large colony of southern fur seals which were hunted until the 1980's when they became a protected species. (The Aquarium has 6 Northern fur seals that are native to Alaska, learn more about this species here!)

Each African penguin has their own unique spot pattern on its chest. Sinclair's spot pattern is very unique. He has such a high concentration of spots that half his chest is black! The interesting thing was that as a juvenile he had very few spots on his belly so we were surprised when he went through his first adult molt to his adult feathers and had all those spots!


Sinclair behind the scenes as a juvenile


Sinclair in the exhibit with his adult plumage

The next time you are visiting the Aquarium, try to identify Sinclair by his unique spot pattern. He should be easy to spot!

- Andrea

In the video we posted earlier, you may have noticed me taking some notes. That's how we keep track of how much each bird eats at each feeding.

The plastic tablet is a handy way to do that. Next to each penguin's name, we use a pencil to mark how many fish they eat. We transcribe this information to official paper copies, once we are dry, along with any observational notes that should be part of each penguin's personal records. The best feature of this tablet is it doesn’t matter if it gets wet!


Tablet in the water


Transcribing information to permanent paper copies

- Andrea

Why do penguins look like they are wearing tuxedoes?



I was asked this question when I was in second grade as a creative writing assignment. I came up with a fanciful story about a penguin who was invited to a wedding for his friend the polar bear (I know now that penguins and polar bears don’t live together, but think of it as a destination wedding). So he got all dressed up in a tux and had a great time dancing the night away. On his walk home he fell through a hole in the ice into the icy cold water. He got out unfazed (he’s a penguin of course he didn’t mind the cold water) and continued home.

Once home and being so tired from a night of dancing, the penguin just flopped into his bed with his tux still on. He woke up the next morning to find he couldn’t get his tux off; it had frozen to him overnight. The penguin was so worried that his friends would make fun of him but the exact opposite happened. All the other penguins thought he looked so cool that they all started putting on their tuxedos and jumping into the icy water. Before long the entire colony was wearing their tuxedos permanently.

Now this is a very cute story, and I got an A, but exactly why do penguins have black and white feathers, making them look like they are wearing tuxedos?



Their feather pattern is a form of camouflage called countershading, which is used to help them hide them from predators as well as their prey in the water. Countershading works from above by blending the penguin's black back into the dark ocean bottom and from below by blending the white belly into the bright surface of the water.

Watch as our penguins swim over a black mat on the bottom of the exhibit, the black feathers blend in so well they seem to disappear!



This is such an effective form of camouflage that you will find it utilized by many aquatic animals with darker colors on their back and lighter colors on their fronts, including many animals that you will find in the Aquarium. The next time you are at the Aquarium try to find examples of countershading!

- Andrea