Humboldt penguin keeper Jessica Rae

HOW do you teach a penguin to swim? The answer is provided by London Zoo’s resident Humboldt penguin expert and keeper Jessica Rae and relates to how you manage their home.

Jess, who has worked with penguins for six years, gave a group of pupils from Brookfield School, Highgate Newtown, the lowdown on the life and times of their Humboldt colony – and introduced the group to 11 new chicks, who are taking their first tentative waddles into water this summer.

Jess explained how the chicks have been taken to a smaller pen where keepers can keep a watchful eye over their development – and the area has a shallow space in its centre. As their downy baby fur begins to shed, the keepers put a little water at the bottom for the chicks to investigate – and then increase it by a fraction every day.

“Covered in soft, downy feathers, newly hatched chicks aren’t able to swim straight away, but at around six to 12 weeks old these fuzzy feathers are replaced by two layers of stiff, overlapping waterproof, black and white feathers – perfect for swimming,” she explained.

Soon, they have the confidence and ability to become waterborne and can be taken back to the main penguin area, home to more than 70 of fellow Humboldts.

The chicks, all born on the Penguin Beach, are named Kermit, Ron Burgundy, Stella, Piggy, Ernest, Cricket, Tiki, Ping, Pong, Sean and Karen.

“After tentatively inspecting the training pool, the chicks have started to test out the water this week; some were splashing around in no time, while others took a little longer to take the plunge,” adds the keeper.

“Each of the chicks will approach swimming at their own pace, just like humans who learn to crawl and walk at slightly different times.

“It’s been great to see the chicks grow in confidence as their swimming ability improves. They’re almost ready to re-join the other penguins on Penguin Beach, where they’ll dive into our 500,000-litre penguin pool – the largest in England.”

The zoo’s rookery, as a colony of penguins is called, feature the Humboldt species, hailing from the coasts of Chile and Peru.

As Jess explained, the Humboldts are facing the pressures all species face with the climate crisis, with struggles to adapt to warming seas and more violent weather extremes.

This is particularly poignant, given the man they are named after: Alexander Von Humboldt, a scientist considered by many as the father of environmentalism.

Alexander Von Humboldt’s story – and how he came to give his name to the penguins in Regent’s Park – is one of vigorous intellectual application and dizzyingly brave exploration.

Born in 1769 in Berlin, he was of a generation that would radically alter how humans perceived the planet, taking philosophy of science away from religious belief and into experimentation, observation and evidence.

Humboldt was a geographer and cartographer, a naturalist, biologist, and Humanist who was inspired by the philosophies of the ancient Greek stoic school and those who rediscovered the Classics during the Renaissance.

The mysteries of the oceans fascinated him – and it was while traversing South America that he identified a cold current running up the spine of Chile as he studied water movement and temperature. The current was given his name, leading the penguins hailing from these chilly waters also enjoy von Humboldt’s title.

As well as giving the black and white creatures his moniker, Humboldt was a pioneer when it came to the relationship between humans and the world around us.

It was while exploring a valley in central America that he began considering humans’ impact on the natural world and foresaw human-induced climate change.

He had trekked to a valley called Aragua, where agriculture had shifted to provide products the empire-building European nations were thirsting for, rather than subsistence crops for sale, barter and consumption locally.

Here, he watched sugar, coffee, cacao and cotton raised for faraway consumers and while on the slopes of the valley, he put together his irrefutable theory of how we impact on the natural world.

He monitored the water table in the nearby Lake Valencia drop dramatically, and considered why.

It tallied with woodland clearances around the lake for crops. Humboldt studied how the loss of trees damaged soil and the lake’s ability to retain water. He wrote how trees offered shade, stopped rapid water evaporation, and cut down radiation from the sun’s rays.

Today, Humboldt penguins are suffering from rising temperatures in the Pacific, over-fishing, drowned in nets, the harvesting of guano and the rise of “El Nino” events – the warming of surface water in the Pacific.

In 1982, an El Nino event killed more than 65 per cent of the population. It slowly recovered but fell sharply when El Nino came back in 1998. With another el Nino this summer taking root, Humboldt-lovers are watching carefully.

While the natural habitat is under threat, the work at London Zoo takes on added poignancy. The children who quizzed Jess on the life and times of the Humboldt instantly recognised the Humboldts are something to cherish: their innocent appreciation of a fascinating creature only deepens the shadow cast by human behaviour that should threaten the natural worlds we share with such animals.