A penguin's feathers are very important for keeping them warm and dry while they are in the cold ocean water. Over time their feathers may wear and break (imagine wearing a sweater everyday for a year, it is bound to get some holes in it, and look a little worse for wear). In order to replace these feathers, penguins go through what is called a molt, where their old feathers are pushed out and replaced by new ones.

A penguin's molt is sometimes called a catastrophic molt, because unlike most birds that will molt a few feathers at a time, penguins molt all of their feathers all at once. And if you look at some of these pictures you can see that catastrophic is a good description, they often look like exploding pillows.


An exploding pillow!

Molting is a 3 stage process and starts weeks before the penguin actually replaces any feathers. Their bodies are making the new feathers while they are gorging themselves on fish which they must do to increase body weight to endure the 2nd stage. Penguins are not waterproof when they molt, so in stage 2 they stay on land for 2-3 weeks fasting until the new feathers have emerged from below the skin. During that time they will not eat, so a few weeks prior to the molt they will increase their food intake to build up a fat reserve to live off of while they are on land. Since we record how many fish each penguin eats everyday we can usually recognize when a penguin is getting ready to molt since their daily food totals can double or even triple. In the wild stage 3 involves returning to the sea to replenish lost body weight.

Here are a few pictures of some of our penguins right before they start molting, notice how much bigger they look than a normal penguin.


An normal African penguin


A penguin getting ready to molt


A normal-sized rockhopper penguin


A rockhopper pre-molt

In this photo you can see the wings of two penguins; the one on the right is just about to start molting.



Can you spot the fresh new feathers coming in?

Stay tuned for more pictures and video as our penguins complete their molts.

- Andrea

This is Lion. He is a little blue penguin and has an orange bracelet on his left wing.


Lion

Lion is named after Lion Island which is the largest little blue penguin breeding island near Sydney, Australia. The island gets its name because its shape resembles the mythical creature, the sphinx. Lion Island was protected in a nature reserve in 1967. It is an ideal little blue breeding habitat because it is free of feral cats and foxes, which are introduced predators of little blue penguins.

(We'll have more about introduced predators in an upcoming blog!)


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Lion was born here at the Aquarium on April 14, 2008. While all penguin births are special to us here at the Aquarium, Lion’s was a very special case. Lion’s egg was overdue to hatch. We made the decision to try to help the chick inside hatch out by manually opening the shell. When Lion was finally hatched out we returned him to his parents. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, his parents rejected Lion and would not care for him. In order for Lion to survive we had to step in.

Lion required around the clock care (not unlike a newborn baby). This required Heather and Caitlin to take him home each evening to feed him and make sure he stayed warm. Once he was older and was fed on a more normal schedule (3-4 times a day, instead of every 3-4 hours) he remained at the Aquarium with other little blue penguin chicks that were born that season, until he was introduced into the exhibit on July 16, 2008.




Lion at home with Heather

This heartwarming story of Caitlin and Heather literally taking their work home with them caught the media’s eye. And for weeks Lion’s story was in the newspaper, and on the local news. Lion, Heather and Caitlin even appeared on CBS's The Early Show. Click on the following news links to see more of Lion's 15 minutes of fame!


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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There's more from MSNBC here. The Associated Press also put together a beautiful slide show narrated by Caitlyn.

- Andrea

Hi, and thanks for checking out the New England Aquarium's Penguin Blog!



As part of the staff who cares for our little blue, African and rockhopper penguins, I'm really excited about this summer's Penguin Power program because our team gets to share neat and interesting facts about our favorite birds — penguins. Regular posts on this blog will answer surprising questions, like "Do penguins have knees?" We'll also take you behind the scenes to meet some of our birds, like a little blue penguin named Lion and an African penguin named Robben. Make sure to check back often. We have tons of videos, pictures, factoids and tid-bits about life at the Aquarium's Penguin Colony coming your way this summer!

First up, I'd like to introduce you to one of our Penguin Pals: Fuego II.



Fuego is a 2-year-old southern rockhopper penguin and he came to the Aquarium in January of 2008. He is named after a group of islands at the southernmost tip of South America in Argentina called Tierra del Fuego (which means "land of fire" in Spanish). Many of the islands in this archipelago are breeding islands for southern rockhoppers.


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Fuego is pretty excited about this summer's theme program, too!



In all seriousness, Fuego is doing a behavior that we affectionately call "the happy dance." It's unclear exactly why they do this, maybe to attract mates or maybe just because it's fun. Pop by the Aquarium sometime and you might be able to see Fuego do his happy dance in person!

- Andrea