black-footed penguin, jackass penguin, cape penguin

Black-footed penguins do not correspond at all to the usual stereotype of the inhabitants of the Antarctic, living in permanent ice and snow. In their home countries they experience a climate that is more Mediterranean-Atlantic, with summers that are not too hot and cool, rainy winters. This means that they usually feel quite at home in our Central European weather conditions. Although Wilhelma's penguins are all Swabian born, or at least hatched in other European zoos, their reproductive rhythm still follows the rhythm of the seasons in the southern hemisphere. Their breeding season begins in September/October (when spring arrives south of the equator), and lasts through the whole of autumn and winter. Black-footed penguins are fastidious fish eaters, receiving two meals a day of herrings that were frozen immediately when freshly caught, then defrosted. As the herrings are defrosted under fresh running water, the mineral salts that are lost in this procedure have to be replaced by salt tablets hidden in the fish. In order to make sure that each penguin gets the tablet allotted to it, the animals are trained at an early age to take their fish straight from the keeper's hand.