‘Big baby’: Melbourne aquarium’s huge 22.5kg penguin chick Pesto set to slim down after becoming viral star
Pesto the penguin has broken the internet – and the scales – but its fans only have a few weeks left to see the chick at its heaviest.
The king penguin, which is less than 9 months old and weighs 22.5kg, is the largest chick the Sea Life aquarium in Melbourne has ever seen.
By comparison, his “foster parents” each weigh 11kg.
Jacinta Early, an education coordinator at Sea Life Melbourne, said it’s “quite unusual for him to be this big and heavy” as penguins of his age at the aquarium have weighed a maximum of 18kg.
But the aquarium expects Pesto to lose weight in the coming weeks as he fledges, or develops his adult feathers. Early said that she was already starting to see some loss of feathers underneath its wings.
While it is impossible to tell how much weight Pesto will lose, Early predicted that post-fledging, it could weigh the same as some of the aquarium’s larger birds.
Baby penguins, which cannot swim or fend for themselves tend to be heavier to keep them warm from the elements, she said.
Pesto’s size has been attributed to his “hearty appetite” and “good” genes – his biological father, Blake, is the largest and oldest penguin at the aquarium. Appetite-wise, Pesto eats 25 to 32 fish a day spread over four feeds, Early said, which was about double what adult king penguins typically eat.
“He’s just a big baby … he’s eating quite a bit, but he’s not at all considered to be an unhealthy weight,” she said.
Early said a vet has conducted regular health checks and Pesto’s checks have come back in the green.
Over the last few months, Pesto has gone viral on social media, with one Instagram creator even posting a penguin inspired makeup tutorial.
“It’s three small baby penguins in a large baby penguin trench coat,” one fan commented on an Instagram video posted on Sea Life Melbourne. “Imagine having a human baby as large as you,” another wrote. “Terrifying.”
Prof Mary-Anne Lea, a professor of marine and polar predator ecology at the University of Tasmania, said it would be uncommon but not impossible for penguins in the wild to weigh that much more than their parents.
She said that at Pesto’s age, wild penguins were often heavier than their parents and the aging process consumes energy reserves.
“In the wild, Pesto would have good body reserves,” she said. “It would imply that he had good parents who fed him well, and then that would give him longer before he needed to really start foraging effectively for himself.”
She said she did not think there was “undue cause for concern” regarding Pesto’s size.
“There’s lots of indicators of animal health and I think if the husbandry team were concerned about that, they would do what’s appropriate,” she said.
Early said there was an increased interest in the aquarium’s penguins, with a lot of visitors from overseas and interstate who had come just for Pesto.
Olivia Wilson, a spokesperson for Merlin Entertainments which operates the aquarium, said about 4.2 billion people had viewed Pesto through Sea Life Melbourne’s social media channels and website.
“[The] Pesto the penguin page on our website is the most viewed and it is where everyone is going,” she said.
But up until September – when the aquarium organised a ‘gender reveal’ – his many admirers were unsure of his gender as king penguins do not have externally visible traits that indicate whether they are male or female.
“He has brought immense joy to everyone here at Sea Life Melbourne and to penguin fans around the world,” said Sea Life Melbourne’s general manager, Claire Burrell.
King penguins are the second largest penguin species, behind emperor penguins, with adult king penguins typically weighing between 9.5kg and 18kg.
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