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Just one of Edinburgh Zoo’s world famous gentoo penguins has been allowed to pick a partner and have chicks this year after the attraction was forced to all but abandon its annual breeding programme.
Keepers selected a penguin named Steffi to be the only mother after she was identified as the most important genetically in the zoo’s collection as she has the rarest bloodline.
The bird, which came from a small collection in Germany and is thought to be named after tennis player Steffi Graf, picked her own mate, a Scottish-hatched male named Terry.
The pair have now produced three chicks, with two of them fostered out to other penguins denied offspring of their own in order to allow Steffi and Terry to raise the third themselves.
The zoo has nearly 100 gentoos, which are famed for the Penguin Parade, their daily walkabout for visitors near the Penguins Rock enclosure.
The attraction has bred up to 40 chicks a year but this year fears over staff shortages during lockdown meant keepers were forced to restrict breeding of the near-threatened species to a single pair.
Jo Elliot, the zoo’s animal collection manager, who coordinates the penguin breeding programme, said: “We selected Steffi as she is the most genetically important.
“All of our gentoos are individually identified. We have pedigrees for all of them going way back and we know which ones are least represented within the captive genepool.
“Steffi came from a small zoo in Germany and has only been breeding for a couple of years. She doesn’t appear to be very closely related to any of our other penguins.
“She picked her own partner and went for Terry, who was born and bred in Edinburgh. He’s less important genetically but he is the male that Steffi has decided to settle down with so that’s the pair we decided to breed.”
All the penguins were allowed to go through the usual rituals of courtship, breeding and nest building. However, only Steffi and Terry incubated eggs while those in other nests were substituted for dummies.
In April, Steffi laid two eggs, which were then fostered out separately to two other adult pairs. Having lost her first clutch, Steffi produced a third egg, which hatched last week.
Penguins were among the first species to arrive at Edinburgh Zoo before it opened in 1913.
The Penguin Parade started in 1951 after a keeper accidentally left the birds’ gate open.