Cathy Free
Being the oldest African penguin in the world has its privileges.
When ET, who lives at Virginia’s Metro Richmond Zoo, turned 43 last month, she took a dip in her private pool and ate a slice of birthday cake (okay, an entire cake) made with capelin fish and decorative ice.
“We wanted to make it the happiest birthday ever,” said Jessica Gring, one of ET’s keepers. “She’s a pretty special penguin with some incredible genes.”
Living such a long life also has its drawbacks. African penguins are monogamous and typically have one partner for life. ET is on her third, having outlived two of her mates, Melvin and Seldona.
But she wasn’t single for long. In 2012, she bonded with Einstein, a penguin three decades her junior. Last year, penguin keepers noticed the other young penguins weren’t being nice to ET, so they moved her and Einstein, now 13, to their own private enclosure.
“As she got older, some of the younger penguins were picking on her a little bit, so we made a retirement home for her to enjoy with Einstein,” said Jim Andelin, the director of the Metro Richmond Zoo. “She can still see the penguin colony through the fence, but she gets along much better on the other side of the mesh wire.”
Zoo workers said female African penguins chose their mates.
“She and Einstein are very bonded to one another and enjoy spending a lot of quality time together,” she said.
ET came to the Virginia zoo in 1995 at 15, said Andelin. She was hatched at the Detroit Zoo in 1980, then was sent to the Columbus Zoo, where she was named in 1982, the same year the movie “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” was released to great fanfare.
"We brought in 10 penguins (including ET) from the Columbus Zoo when we opened in 1995, and we’ve since hatched 299 penguins here,“ said Andelin, noting that most of the hatchlings went to other zoos.
“None of them have had the life span of ET,” he said. “She’s a little slower now, but she’s still enjoying a happy life.”
According to worldwide zoo database records, ET has been the longest living African penguin in captivity in North America since 2018, when the previous record holder, a penguin named Opal, died at age 41 at an Omaha zoo, Andelin said.
“Our records show she’s the oldest,” he said.
African penguins typically live for 15 to 20 years in the wild, he added, but those in zoos can live much longer.
ET leads a quiet and comfortable life with Einstein, Andelin said, and was in good health except for losing some of her eyesight and receiving medication for arthritis.
ET had hatched about a dozen eggs, the last being in 2016, said Gring. One of her daughters lived until age 37.
“She loves to play with bubbles and mirrors, and she stays pretty active. She actually spends more time swimming than Einstein does.”
Keepers have installed a step inside her pool to make it easier for her to get into the water and is “still a little feisty when we pick her up to do her vet check-ups”.
She and Andelin said there was much to admire about the world's oldest African penguin.
African penguins had been listed as endangered since 2010 and had decreased in population by 95% over the past 100 years, Andelin said. Their main threats in the wild were climate change, loss of habitat, oil spills, and commercial fishing.
“We’re down to only about 40 000 of them in the wild,” he said, noting that there were about 900 African penguins living in US zoos. “Fortunately, with our breeding programme here, we’ve had some good luck with them.”
ET's golden years revolved around swimming, napping and eating, said Gring. She would also sidle up to the fence now and then to take in the latest drama going on with the rest of the colony, which numbers 42.
“We feed her as much as she wants to eat ‒ anywhere from four to 10 herring, trout and capelin on an average day,” she said. “And when she wants some serious quiet time, she can go to her nest box (a small pet carrier) in her enclosure.
“We don't want to think about when she’s gone, so we’ve already started planning her 44th birthday party.” - The Washington Post
The Independent on Saturday