World famous penguin turns one at Melbourne Aquarium

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Pesto, the pudgy penguin who became a worldwide internet sensation, is celebrating his first birthday at Melbourne aquarium.

Transcript

00:00Well, I've got my party hat here and the celebrations are going to be held all this weekend for

00:09Pesto the penguin, the little chunky monkey who absolutely stole our hearts and stole

00:14the hearts of people worldwide.

00:16And I'm joined now by Kat Bushel, who is the Education Supervisor here at Melbourne Aquarium.

00:22Can you just tell us which one is Pesto up here?

00:24So Pesto is standing, thankfully for us, right in front of the glass here.

00:28The reason that we can tell him apart from the others is really looking at that beak

00:31plate, that orange part of his beak, it's a little bit darker than the other adults.

00:35So he's more of a browny, purply colour instead of that bright, bright orange.

00:39We can also look at those yellow feathers on the side of his head and chest as well.

00:42They're a little bit more pastel, a little more pale.

00:44So he is standing up there.

00:45He's sort of a little bit closer to the front of the glass than the other bird who's up

00:49there.

00:50And they're sort of much paler colours.

00:52He's given the other bird a little bit of a peck at the moment.

00:54Is there a bit of love interest going on?

00:56There might be a bit of romance going on there.

00:58That bird up there is Pudding.

00:59They've been hanging out a lot recently, doing lots of very flirty behaviours, cleaning each

01:02other.

01:03They pretty much spend almost all their time together.

01:05So he's been following her around a lot this morning.

01:08So yeah, wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of romance in there.

01:10Okay, so pretty precocious behaviour by a one-year-old.

01:12But can you explain, like in penguin years, exactly how old he is right now?

01:16So king penguins typically live sort of between 20 to 25 years out in the wild.

01:20So if you were going to sort of equate that to human years, we look at one human year

01:24being around four penguin years.

01:26So he is still quite young.

01:27A little too young to be part of his own breeding season, but we are starting to see a little

01:31bit of that flirty behaviour.

01:33And a special birthday present for him?

01:34Of course.

01:35He has a jelly cake today with fish in it.

01:37He's going to find that delicious.

01:39There's lots of other fun enrichment as well.

01:41There's a big sign up for him and lots of fun things for the people today here to do.

01:44We've got some cake and some cupcakes for our first thousand guests today and a DJ over

01:48the weekend.

01:49It's going to be one hell of a party.

01:50Oh, fantastic.

01:51Hopefully a lot of Katy Perry songs because, of course, Katy Perry and Olivia Rodrigo were

01:55among the pop stars here to see Just Pesto.

01:59So you can see what sort of a drawcard he is.

02:01Even without his feathers and being a cute ball of fluff, he's still a gorgeous boy,

02:06isn't he?

02:07Yes, such a cute little guy.

02:08So there you go.

02:09Pesto won and plenty more of good times and fish still in store for him.

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