An African penguin chick on Thursday made its first appearance at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island.
The juvenile penguin joined his parents and other penguins at the aquarium’s Sea Cliffs habitat, home to a total of 37 African penguins. He weighs about 3.4 kilograms at just over three months old, aquarium officials said.
The male chick weighed 63.2 grams when he hatched on Dec. 4, 2025. The aquarium’s animal keepers tracked developmental benchmarks as the chick grew, including a target 20% daily weight gain, transition from soft down to waterproof feathers, and demonstration of strong social, swimming, and hopping behaviors.
This marks the 19th hatching of an African penguin, an endangered species. The African penguin is a flightless bird endemic to the rocky coasts of South Africa and Namibia. They are one of the smallest penguin species in the world and are considered critically endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Wild populations have declined by 75% in the past two decades due to scarcity of prey fish, human disturbance, habitat loss, and other threats. Estimates indicate there are roughly 9,900 breeding pairs remaining in the wild.
The breeding of this species at the New York Aquarium is part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan under the Saving Animals From Extinction program. The aquarium participates in the SAFE program for African penguins, a collective effort across more than 50 AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums to save the African penguin from extinction.
