Himakajima is an island in Aichi Prefecture’s Mikawa Bay, south of Nagoya, with a population of less than 2,000 people. During the recently concluded summer vacation period, a temporary penguin exhibit was set up on one of the island’s beaches, and everything seems to have gone well until the last day of the event.
On August 25, as the organizers were taking down the installation, they wanted to let the penguins cool off by taking a swim in the ocean while everything was being packed up. Unfortunately, while a containment net had been put in place to keep the animals from swimming out to the open sea, one of them, a 6-year-old cape penguin named Pen-chan, somehow slipped through the enclosure.
Penguins, of course, are not native to Japan, and Penters, the organization that organized the event, was particularly worried about Pen-chan, since she was born and raised in captivity, and hasn’t ever had to hunt for food in the wild. Unfortunately, a search of the island’s coastlines failed to find the animal, and an approaching typhoon prevented the use of boats to expand the search to the surrounding seas.
There was a brief glimmer of hope, though, when Pen-chan was spotted at a different island, Shinojima, to the south of Himakajima.
▼ About three kilometers of sea separate the two islands.
After the Shinojima sighting, though, several days went by with no developments, until finally someone again saw Pen-chan on September 8, a full two weeks after the escape. Had she made a U-turn and headed back to Himakajima? Nope, she’d done the exact opposite, travelling all the way around the tip of the Chita Peninsula and up its west coast to Shin Maiko Marine Park in the town of Chita.
▼ Google Maps doesn’t show the sea route that Pen-chan presumably took, but it’s approximately 45 kilometers from Himakajima to Shin Maiko Marine Park.
▼ Video of Pen-chan hanging out at Shin Maiko Marine Park
After a park worker spotted Pen-chan and called out to her, the escapee penguin came over and was taken into custody, with Penters coming to pick her up soon after. She’d suffered no injuries during her two weeks surviving in the wild, and while she’d lost a little weight, she’d apparently managed to find some sort of sustenance, and is reportedly in good health and fine spirits, though Penters is keeping a close eye on her condition before returning her to the exhibition rotation.
Source: CBC News, FNN Prime, Sankei Shimbun
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© SoraNews24
18 Comments
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kurisupisu
Obviously, being in captivity didn’t suit this particular penguin.
nandakandamanda
Great vacation!
Bob
The whole aquarium business is just shady. Animal cruelty, nothing else.
WoodyLee
If you really do care about the well being of this Penguin which I very much doubt since $$$ is involved, then Set Him Free in his own habitat and he or she will learn to survive by watching other Penguin.
His drive to be free should NOT be stopped, The taste of freedom is IRREVERSABLE
FizzBit
Someone should be scripting this
Geeter Mckluskie
It's high time all zoos, aquariums etc. become a thing of the past. If you want to see wild animals there's a big wild world out there...have at it
DanteKH
@Geeter
Only 0.1% of the world can afford traveling to South Pole in order to see the penguins or wild life there. While I completely agree that some zoo enclosure are just too small for some animals, remember that penguins usually have bigger place to roam, they are alway fed and taken care.
Also, due to environment lost, some animals can only survive in captivity (ex: Panda bears)
WA4TKG
Some people know the beach is the best place to be
Zaphod
Free pengi! Hope he enjoyed his vacation.
theFu
This is a Cape Penguin, not an Antarctic Penguin. There are native Penguins all around southern African and southern Argentina and Chile.
And many more than 0.1% can certainly see penguins in South America or Africa. Heck, I've seen penguins in the wild on both continents and I'm hardly wealthy. Both in the Atlantic and Pacific sides of these continents. If you make travel a priority, then you can see amazing parts of the world. Like anything else, if it isn't a priority, then you'll never do it. For me, the cost to visit these places was actually less than going to Europe and much less than visiting SE Asia or Central Asia. Because the costs were so much less, we had really nice, high-end accommodations nightly - about 4x less than hotels in Japan for much nicer rooms.
Penguins are filthy animals. They may appear cute and will usually leave humans alone, if you leave them alone, but they will definitely bite too. In the South African Cape area, there are 10k+ breading pairs of penguins living in the wild. Their numbers have drastically reduced in the last 30 years. You can easily visit them on a trip to Cape Town.
Penguins live about 2x longer in captivity than they do living in the wild. It is tough out there in the ocean and there are lots of predators. So, is living 2x longer in captivity with other penguins and not having to risk your life to find food worth it? I can't say.
RougeDolphin
A cool story.
John-San
Keep their belly full and they will stick around. They have a auto inbuilt compass wanting to head south. Being the northern hemisphere no doubt the magnetic play of the North Pole having instinctively made Pen-chan heading toward the magnetic pull of the north pole. I wonder if opposite magnetic pull has on the mental health of these birds. while being penned up in the northern Hemisphere. So wonder if there actual a cruelty to animal issue. Keep the birds belly full they have no need to head anywhere. So are they feeding these bird enough.
konjo4u
Thank goodness the park ranger convinced the penguin to surrender peacefully.
theFu
That's an interesting idea. I thought birds that migrate know to follow magnetic lines for their internal compass. Not many species migrate east/west.
I can say that as a native norther hemisphere human with a good sense of direction, I do get slightly confused when in the southern hemisphere and have to really concentrate to know which way I'm facing/heading.
Cape Penguins aren't cold weather penguins. Where they live is actually fairly warm much of the year, but the sea is chilly. They live about as far south as Atlanta is north, so the climate is pretty hot (tempered by cool oceans). Seeing hundreds of Cape Penguins on a hot day with sun-burnt faces as they head up a hill into some brush, looking for their on hole in the ground (or a numbered plastic house provided by conservationists) isn't what most people expect, but that's the reality of their home beach. They like some sun, but they choose to nest in the shade.
Wish I could post some photos here. It would be clear.
starpunk
I don't think so. Mankind keeps mucking up planet Earth with all this pollution and oil drilling and dirty wars ('dirty' in more ways than one), and mining and more. We keep on doing these things, zoos are going to be the only places anyone can even see creatures like these.
starpunk
And one explicit example is where the bison of North America are located today, in parks and large ranches. It's even worse for the European buffalo where they're clustered up in a few farms in France and Germany.
Nicolò
I doubt the belief that an animal raised up by human cannot survive in the wild. I know this is not the case for undomesticated animals with strong instincts.