Orphaned Penguin Gets Two Moms

Tag : Soft Towel
Like many moms of newborns, Caitlin Hume still has plenty of workto do when she gets home. There's the herring-and-krill formula toprepare, followed by a little peeping and playtime, then bed.

For the past few weeks, Hume and fellow New England Aquariumbiologist Heather Urquhart have been mothering a 22-ounce LittleBlue Penguin that was rejected by its parents after a difficulthatching.

Each night, the two surrogate moms delicately pack the baby -covered in soft, gray-blue down - into a plastic cooler. Inside,the bird rests comfortably, swaddled in a white towel for the carride home, oblivious to Boston's rush-hour traffic.

Once home, the still-unnamed chick - which turns 37 days old onTuesday - waits in the guest room until Hume prepares a babyformula of herring fillet and shrimp-like krill that goes into ablender and is heated to about 98 degrees. The pungent meal,resembling a chocolate shake, is fed to the penguin four times aday using a syringe with a special tip.

After dinner, the penguin enjoys a long nap - not unlike a humanbaby.

"After you feed him, he'll make some peeping noises for a while,and then he goes to sleep," said Hume, who has no children of herown. "And then he's out cold until the next feeding" around 5 a.m.

The Little Blue Penguin species, which is native to Australia andNew Zealand, is among three that are part of the New EnglandAquarium's penguin habitat. The other two include the African,native to South Africa, and the Rockhopper, which is foundprincipally along Argentina and the Falkland Islands.

Andrea Desjardins, a penguin biologist who works at the aquarium,said the penguin team noticed an egg was about a week overdue fromits normal 38-day term. They found the chick inside was stilldeveloping, so they essentially induced the chick to hatch byslowing chipping away tiny bits of shell, allowing the penguin toeventually break through.

When the biologists tried to give the bird back to his parents toraise it normally, they rejected the baby.

"I think they were just a little shocked that they went from eggsto a chick without the process in between," Urquhart told CBS' The Early Show .

Aquarium biologists said the baby could have died because it wasn'tbeing kept warm or fed. That's when the surrogate moms stepped in.

"It's a lot of work, although I guess it's probably easier thanhaving a real baby because I can leave him in my house when I'mdone," Hume said.

During the day, the penguin is cared for deep inside the aquarium,away from visitors.

The baby penguin appears to be making good progress and likely willbe introduced to other chicks by the end of May. Biologists won'tbe able to determine the bird's sex until it is three months old.

Urquhart, who manages the penguin exhibit, admits to a littleseparation anxiety when it's Hume's turn to take the chick home.When the baby is with her, Urquart said she will sometimes wake upin the middle of the night just to check on it.

She has been involved in home-caring for animals since she came tothe aquarium 20 years ago.

"It creates a special feeling for you. You feel like you're part ofa very special process," Urquhart said. "You're helping bring a newlife into the world."