The gentoo penguins of London's Sea Life Aquarium, like us, can get bored. And when the aquarium's cautious response policy to COVID-19 took effect, their human companions both in and outside their London habitat shifted from a happy and interesting thousands every day to staff members only, a count of maybe twenty or thirty including the penguins and their daily handlers. The penguins certainly noticed the difference! Their handlers spent extra time playing with the penguins to prevent boredom, but the penguins, having noticed the long absence of the vast majority of their usual number, became ever more desirous of more frequent and novel entertainment. So when the staff eventually came to the idea of putting on a movie for the gentoo penguins, everyone was surprised and pleased to witness the penguins give it a really good response. The aquarium staff have been putting on shows for the gentoos ever since.
I was pleasantly surprised myself when I heard this story on NPR (National Public Radio) news a week or two ago on an evening drive home. Host Marco Werman was interviewing the aquarium's senior curator, James Robinson, and the interview proved to be fascinating, educational, and, well, of course funny in its own right. I listened to the full interview a second time so I could relay my favorite parts of it to you here (with some added sciencey detail--I am a nerd about marine biology, after all!), and as always, included links to my sources so you can listen to the interview or do some additional reading as well. All of the following material is paraphrased
The first prompt Marco gave was for James to tell us about gentoo penguins and whether they are social or active creatures. James was very straightforward, yet appreciative of the penguins in his answer:
- First, penguins actually aren't particularly smart, though of course, they're very charismatic and fun to watch on land. And while gentoos are one of the smarter penguin species, their true specialty is hunting. They happen to be the fastest species of penguin swimmers out there! They target krill and small fish, and have highly evolved and well-trained eyesight, hearing, and reaction times to be successful hunters. James stated they are truly beautiful to watch while hunting underwater.
Naturally, Marco had to ask what prompted the movie showings. This is what James explained, with a little added detail from me:
- Normally, the gentoo penguins fed large amounts of food three times a day, and when they're fed, they're also cleaned and played with. They love interacting with one another and people, and see people as big and funny-looking . . . penguins! Further, they take people into their penguin family with open arms--well, flippers in their case. So living in their habitat before the COVID-19 pandemic, they didn't just see thousands of people visiting them every day, they saw thousands of penguins, and further, their colony (penguin family), visiting them and there to play. They were used to having this level of interaction practically every day until the aquarium halted its guest visits altogether and for the long haul as a safety response to the pandemic.
- For the first month, the gentoos' caretakers simply upped the penguins' play time with games, toys, and shiny things especially, such as bubbles (yes, bubbles! They are absolutely enthralled with shiny things, and will run around to pop the bubbles with their beaks), to keep the penguins entertained. After that, the penguins began to appear more desperate for attention. Imagine a charismatic, social, attention-loving animal such as a dog being used to frequent visits and attention from many people coming in and out of its home for most of its life, and suddenly experiencing just one person's presence or much less frequent visits and play for not just a week, or a couple, but for more than six months!
- TV ties in here for the following reasons. Firstly, most hunting animals, such as dogs and penguins even more so, have greatly increased movement recognition ("frame rate" receptivity) than ours. 24 frames, or flashing images, per second on an electronic screen (the measure for this is called FPS, meaning "frames per second") is enough for slideshows of still (nonmoving) images to appear as normal, live events to us. For penguins like these gentoos, 24 FPS is too slow and would show a jumpy and discombobulating series of images! A modern TV on the market nowadays may show an astounding 1,080 progressive frames per second (you may have seen this labeled as "1080p" in tech specification lingo). Though many modern broadcasts only display 50, 60, or 120 FPS, these ratings are much more a gentoo penguin's speed. In other words, TV's have been improved well beyond our vision so any creature near them, whether pet dogs, birds, or consequently, these gentoo penguins, can watch the same movies we do! Because of this, modern TVs can be very good tools to entertain animals besides humans.
- As soon as the caretakers started to play TV, the penguins were clearly engaged, especially (ironically!) the younger ones. This, funnily enough, seemed to be appreciated by their parents who got a bit a break from having to keep their young entertained.
- The TV brought about a new opportunity for experimentation and learning about penguins on our part. The aquarium staff wanted to find out if the gentoos liked certain shows and movies better than others, and found this was indeed the case! The penguins particularly liked shows with a lot of motion, color, brightness, and, of course, shiny things just as in past playtime.
- So, what was their favorite movie? Elf! In fact, they seemed simply obsessed with it. It's almost always colorful and bright, with a lot of movement and changing scenery, and it frequently displays a lot of shiny objects such as snow and glitter.
Gentoos' attraction to these cinematic qualities seems to make sense when considered with the knowledge that these penguins are great hunters, particularly of small crustaceans and fish that display multiple of these qualities, such as fast movement, color, and reflectivity (shininess or brightness in sunlight). I would guess that the basic explanation is that each specification complements, or makes full use of, their strengths as successful hunters with excellent vision.
Photo of the gentoos (presumably in the London Sea Life Aquarium for the listed location and visible background decor), taken by Sid Balachandran and with licensed use via Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/jV7v7S-kmes
As of the interview on Wednesday, December 9, the aquarium had been reopened for about a week, and the penguins were happy to have their massive flock returned--so happy, in fact, that they tired themselves out on the first day and were seen going to bed unusually early!
I hope you enjoyed this post, my first in a series of wacky and funny, while still hopefully educational, posts in this "Out of the Blue" category of my marine science blog. I know I enjoyed hearing their story on NPR's international news coverage, and I hope this story, among others, inspires you to seek the weird, cool, and valuable lessons our oceans and the life within them have to offer. Happy holidays; may it be filled with many blessings and shiny things! -Cole Bot
Resources:
The wonderful news story from "The World" with Amanda McGowan as its producer, with host Marco Werman and interviewee James Robinson, London Sea Life Aquarium's senior curator.
A techy TV explanation:
Some other coverage of this story:
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