It is difficult to completely replicate the natural habitat of wild animals. However, in birds, since most behaviors are driven by instinct, many challenges arise for offspring born in captivity.

In particular, birds that eat live fish "in the water," like penguins, are difficult to raise in a way that replicates their wild environment, so the only option is to train them to adapt to their captive environment.

Rockhopper penguins are a species of penguin with very strong, well-programmed instincts, making them difficult to train. The most common method of feeding penguins is "hand-feeding," where a person holds the fish in their hand and lets the penguin pick it up and eat it. However, Tokyo Sea Life Park does not use this method. This is partly because feeding each penguin individually would be difficult due to the large number of penguins they keep, but also because they want all the penguins to be able to forage for the amount they want to eat on their own. Food is placed in the pool, on the floor, or in trays on the floor, and the penguins are trained to eat the fish themselves.

During training, the young birds are first separated from their parents and taught to eat by hand. Then, they are trained to eat from the floor and returned to the flock.

The level of learning in this training varies greatly from individual to individual. I believe that something triggers them to learn new behaviors, but that trigger seems to differ from one individual to another. Whether or not animal keeper 's teaching method are well matched greatly influences the degree of learning.

Furthermore, the influence of the other chicks being trained together seems to play a significant role. This year (2009), we trained eight chicks that were born within the last 10 days of May or the beginning of June.

When the chicks were separated from their parents about three months after hatching, five out of the eight chicks were able to eat fish placed on the floor at almost the same time about a month later. They learned the behavior by competing with each other.

Next, two more birds followed suit, using their predecessors as role models, and completed their training one after another. However, one bird was left behind, as it had not yet learned to eat by hand.

Actually, this kind of situation happens from time to time. There are always some puppies that are a bit shy. But after that, we can focus our training on the remaining puppies, and now we can even hand-feed them.

Currently, you can see all eight of these penguins in the penguin enclosure at Tokyo Sea Life Park. Try to find the one born this year. The yellow ornamental feathers on its head and the black markings on its chest are clues.

[Tokyo Sea Life Park]

(December 22, 2009)