Penguin breeding in Edinburgh

• Main Authors: Gillespie, T.H., F.R.S.E., F.Z.S.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 1939
• Subjects: Leith; Salvesen; Theodore; Antarc*; Antarctica; Aptenodytes patagonica; King Penguins; Pygoscelis antarctica; Pygoscelis papua
• Online Access: http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/record/504103; http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/document/547752

The Scottish National Zoological Park at Edinburgh has been notably successful in keeping and breeding penguins. It is happy in possessing as a friend and benefactor, Mr Theodore E. Salvesen, head of the firm of Christian Salvesen & Co., Leith, to whose interest and generosity it owes the great number of penguins it has possessed. Of the seventeen known species of penguins, seven are represented in the Park, the king (Aptenodytes patagonica Miller), gentu (Pygoscelis papua Forster), ringed (Pygoscelis antarctica Forster), macaroni (Catarrhactes chrysolophus Brandt), Magellan (Spheniscus magellanicus Forster), Peruvian (Spheniscus humboldti Meyen) and black-footed (Spheniscus demersus L.). The collection has risen as high in number as 180 individuals, but at present numbers only about 70. The first penguins received in the Park were three king penguins which arrived from South Georgia in January 1914. One of these three was fully adult and was therefore not less than two years old at the time of its arrival. I am happy to say that it is still alive. It is a female and was the mother of the first chick hatched in the Park. The other two which came at that time were in the brown nestling plumage and were probably, therefore, just about a year old when they arrived. One of these young ones, a male, was, after it had moulted, much courted by the adult, but in spite of the attention paid to it by the adult female in the years 1915, 1916 and 1917, it showed little inclination to respond and was, I concluded, not sexually mature at that time. In 1918 the female laid an egg which was not fertile. On the 1st of September 1919 another egg was laid. This egg was incubated by the parents, both birds taking turns with the egg though the greater part of the work of incubation seemed to fall upon the male. The king penguin makes no nest, but holds its single egg on the feet and covers it with the skin and feathers of the lower part of the abdomen. There is nothing in the way of a pouch for brooding the egg and the egg is ...