King penguin

The King Penguin stands at a height of 1 metre.  It is the second tallest penguin, after the Emperor Penguin, which is 1.3m tall.

The King Penguin was initially thought to be the tallest and largest penguin – the king of penguins until in 1844 when the Emperor Penguin was described as the largest of all penguins.

King Penguins dive to depths of 100m and beyond to catch bioluminescent lanternfish. Our King Penguins feed on capelin and herring. As the fish are thawed, water-soluble vitamins are lost.

To compensate for the loss, our keepers hide multi-vitamin tablets in fish and hand-feed them to our penguins.  Each bird gets three tablets a day, while smaller penguins receive two.

At 55 days, King Penguins have one of the longest incubation periods among birds. The female lays a single egg. Both parents take turns to incubate the egg between their feet and a fold of bare skin (the brood pouch). 

Then one parent goes hunting at sea and may be away for weeks. Throughout this period, the other parent cares for the egg without eating. When its mate returns, it takes over.    

King Penguin chicks sport a downy brown coat and look so different from the adults that they were once thought to be a different species. Early explorers called them `woolly penguins’.

King Penguin chicks take about 13 months to grow waterproof feathers and become independent – the longest of all penguin species.     

For the first few weeks after hatching, the chicks are fed and kept warm by their parents. At about six weeks old, they join a creche while their parents go hunting at sea.

They may fast for up to five months and lose up to 70% of their body weight before the parents return to feed them.  Some parents never return, and chicks starve to death.