00:05Hey guys, I heard we're going to be doing something with some penguins today.
00:09Yeah, we're actually getting ready to go get their fish ready for the day and weigh them.
00:13That sounds like a lot of fun. Can I come help?
00:15Sure, let's go.
00:19Zookeepers Stephanie, Hannah, and Jason work with African penguins at the Little Rock Zoo,
00:23and they brought me behind the scenes to see how they take care of them.
00:27Stephanie, what are we doing here?
00:28We're actually getting the fish ready for the day for the penguins to eat,
00:32and we're going to start out by putting vitamins right inside the gills of the fish.
00:35Why don't we finish stuffing all these and then go out and weigh them?
00:38Alright, let's go.
00:42These penguins may eat up to one pound of fish per day,
00:45which is about 14% of their body weight.
00:49That's like an eight-year-old kid eating 30 cheeseburgers.
00:58So now that all the fish have vitamins stuffed in them, how do we feed the fish to the penguins?
01:02Well, I have a bucket of fish right here, and we'll give everyone one vitamin fish,
01:07and then they can have as many as they want after that.
01:10Well, there's so many penguins, how do you keep track of who ate what?
01:13Well, I write down how many they eat on this sheet,
01:16and then we write it down on a piece of paper in the exhibit so that we can keep track
01:20of it.
01:36I don't know what the Legos want.
01:39That sounds super sweet.
01:41I don't know.
01:55So now that we're here inside the exhibit, how do we get them from here to down where the scale
01:59is?
02:00Well, we actually stand at the gate, and we jiggle the handle, and we call them,
02:04and they're used to seeing us there when we come out for food and stuff,
02:07so they just follow us right into the building.
02:11After breakfast, keepers make sure everyone is in tip-top shape by weighing the penguins on a special scale.
02:19Well, we're actually weighing the penguins.
02:21We weigh them every day so that we can make sure they get their fill of fish.
02:24I see he weighs seven pounds. Is that a healthy weight for a penguin?
02:27That is a really good weight for him. He's very healthy.
02:34So how do you train a penguin to get on a scale?
02:36Well, what we do is we put the scale in a doorway, and we shift all of them into the
02:41kitchen,
02:41and then they want to go over the scale to get back to their room where they usually sleep.
02:48All right, so Gable is seven pounds.
02:52Laura is 6.6 pounds.
02:55All right, Taz is 7.6 pounds.
03:00The Little Rock Zookeepers taught us so much about caring for African penguins.
03:04It takes a lot of work to keep this penguin group fed, weighed, and happy,
03:08but everything is going swimmingly thanks to Stephanie, Hannah, and Jason's hard work.
03:13All right.
03:14All right.
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