Ten African penguin chicks have hatched in just over a year at a San Francisco science museum as scientists strive to save the endangered bird.
The bird is native to the South African coast and up west to Namibia, a region that Holly Rosenblum, senior biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, said was reminiscent of the California coast and its diverse kelp forests. Only 9,000 breeding pairs remain in the wild, a sharp decline from an estimated one million pairs a century ago, Rosenblum told USA TODAY.
Before the recent baby boom started in November 2022, the California Academy of Sciences , a nonprofit science museum and research institute in San Francisco, said it went four years without any new chicks. Sparks Perkins, a biologist at the academy’s Steinhart Aquarium, said the last ten chicks hatched over a span of ten years.
The youngest chick hatched on Jan. 12, and its sex has not yet been determined. African penguins can live to be 27 years old in the wild, and longer in captivity.