Penguins wander freely at aquarium closed over coronavirus
As humanity hunkers down, these penguins have been granted the chance to explore.
Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium closed to the public on Friday, giving some of its permanent residents the rare ability to check out the other exhibits for themselves.
“Without guests in the building, caretakers are getting creative in how they provide enrichment to animals,” the aquarium tells the Chicago Tribune, “Introducing new experiences, activities, foods and more to keep them active, encourage them to explore, problem-solve and express natural behaviors.”
For some lucky birds, this meant an in-house expedition.
“Some of the penguins went on a field trip to meet other animals at Shedd,” the aquarium writes in a tweet.
Caretakers filmed one penguin, named Wellington, experiencing the Shedd’s Amazon Rising exhibit with a sense of what appears to be the penguin equivalent of wonder.
“Wellington seemed most interested in the fishes in Amazon Rising!” the aquarium captions a tweet of Wellington looking around at the various fish tanks with his wings out.
The fish even look back. “The black-barred silver dollars also seemed interested in their unusual visitor,” caretakers write.
Another penguin, named Monte, most enjoyed visiting the Shedd’s Polar Play Zone, posing with dolphins during photo ops usually reserved for human visitors.
On Friday, despite the aquarium being closed and widespread panic regarding the novel coronavirus, permanent aquarium resident Yam the giant river turtle celebrated his birthday. “Happy birthday to Yam!” writes the Shedd in a birthday post, adding that “animal care staff are onsite 24/7 to continue looking after the animals, including celebrating birthdays.”
In honor of his 28th birthday, Yam partied hard, eating a pie with a tortoise pellet crust, sweet potato filling and grape, kale and pomegranate seed decorations.
The aquarium will remain closed to the public through at least March 29, they write in a closure post.
