Giant Penguin Chick Wins Hearts, Extra Fish, And a Gender Reveal Party
Michelle Milliken
Growing kids can certainly have a healthy appetite, but one penguin in Australia really takes the cake, literally.
Pesto the king penguin chick has become renowned far beyond SEA LIFE Melbourne aquarium, where he’s been raised by foster parents Hudson and Tango. While the internet users of the world do tend to get attached to cute little animals, Pesto is especially loved for his not-so-little size.
According to SEA LIFE, this nine-month-old chick weighs in at 22 kilograms, or nearly 50 pounds. He’s also about 3 feet tall and able to look over his parents’ heads. This may not be overly surprising, though, as staff say his biological dad, Blake, is the aquarium’s biggest and oldest penguin. The genetics are apparently strong with Blake.
The aquarium notes that Pesto’s size, the largest they’ve personally seen among their chicks, is also due to the parents who have cared for him. It takes a village to raise a giant baby penguin. He eats about 25 fish a day to maintain his imposing figure, about double what adult king penguins get. This is necessary to help him bulk up, though.
Pesto is such a big star that he even had his own gender reveal party, though parents of teenage boys may have already been able to guess that someone of that appetite may just be a boy.
Staff say you can’t tell the gender of a king penguin chick just by looking, so they had to send out a blood sample to get the result. That was announced via a cake with hidden blue frosting, whose reveal was, of course, met with applause.
While he’s sure to be a larger bird, staff say once he starts fledging, or developing his adult feathers, he will drop some of that weight.
