Page 10 - Lets Make Waves December 2018

P by: Richard Henderson, D.V.M
E
T T

T
Galveston’s Penguins
Have a Birthday
Corner

T
his year
marks twen-
ty years
since the
King penguins hatched
on Harborside Drive in thousands of miles away. This plastic often looks like food to
Galveston. So, does this birds, fish and marine mammals and is inadvertently ingested
mean the penguins can with disastrous results. Biologists often find undigestible plastic
claim to be BOIs? Biol- in the stomachs of dead seabird chicks that was fed mistakenly
ogists from Moody to them by their parents.
Gardens made the eight We all must be good stewards of our outdoor spaces and help
-thousand-mile journey keep our oceans free of trash. When visiting Galveston, please
to South Georgia Island leave our beaches cleaner than you found them. You may be
to collect 100 penguin eggs. These eggs were laid late in the pen- saving the life of a bird or other sea creature.
guins’ breeding season. The hatchlings unfortunate enough to be Penguin Trivia Quizenguin Trivia Quiz enguin Trivia Quizenguin Trivia Quiz
P P P
born so late in a season have slim chances of survival as cold
weather sets in before they are fully feathered and seaworthy. 1) What country is the home B) Rock Hopper
Because so many of these chicks die, Moody Gardens was al- to the species of penguin C) Tuxedo
lowed to collect eggs from this group to populate their new pen- living close to the equator? D) Emperor
guin exhibit. A) South Africa
B) Brazil 4) What animal below does
After their transcontinental journey, the eggs were taken to a C) Ecuador not feed on penguins?
D) None of the above. All pen- A) Leopard seal
building owned by Farmer’s Marine Copper. A specially de- guins must live near ice. B) Orcas
signed incubator and nursery was set up in an unused portion of C) Petrels, a type of gull
the building. 2) Penguins are one of the D) Polar bear
two species of birds with fur
At the end of the sixty-two-day incubation period 72 fluffy gray rather than feathers. 5) The largest species of
chicks emerged from the eggs that were fertile. The baby birds A) True penguin is:
were hand-fed bits of fish and squid around the clock by the B) False A) Emperor
dedicated staff. Several months later the fledglings were ready to B) King
C) Queen
live in the new Moody Gardens’ South Pacific exhibit. Many of 3) Which of the following is D) Pawn
not a species of penguin?
the original King penguin flock are still in the exhibit while oth- A) Macaroni
ers have been placed in other aquariums around the country and Answers on Page 55
have successfully raised their own chicks.

Although there are still hundreds of thousands of penguins that
inhabit the southern polar oceans, some populations are at risk Richard D. Henderson, DVM
because of rising sea temperatures, shrinking sea ice and inges- Galveston Veterinary Clinic
tion of plastic pollution floating in our oceans. We must all be 2108 61st Street
aware that plastic trash left on our beaches can end up in oceans Galveston, TX 77551
409.356.9000

10 | Waves Magazine | December 2018 Issue