People worried about eating more than they planned this Thanksgiving should take a hint from the Shedd Aquarium’s Rockhopper penguins.
These penguins, which eat primarily herring and capelin fish, are natural self-regulators and stop eating when they’ve had their fill. Once they have eaten enough calories to support their activity level, these penguins’ meal is finished.
“Penguins eat what they need to survive,” said Lauren O’Neill, a trainer on the Shedd animal care team. “I wish I self-regulated on Thanksgiving because I always eat too much, and I absolutely regret it later, so that is definitely something that I will try to take away when I am indulging in my family’s Thanksgiving.”
As humans prepare for their Thanksgiving feast on Thursday, the animals have been enjoying their own fishy snacks. O’Neill said everything the Shedd feeds its animals is sustainably caught, so the animals have a varying diet depending on what fishers can catch.
The Shedd has nine Rockhoppers, and two of its original penguins, Wellington and Magdalena, have resided there since the exhibition opened in 1991 and are now among the oldest penguins in U.S. zoos and aquariums. In July, a new chick hatched to parents Edward and Annie.
Feeding the Rockhoppers every day takes about 10 pounds of fish, with each bird eating five to 12 fish twice a day, O’Neill said.
“They’ll eat a certain amount of fish; their bodies kind of let them know they’ve had enough, and then they’ll just walk away from the feed, or sometimes they’ll hang out just to sit in our laps,” O’Neill said. “They might just be hanging there, you might offer them a fish, and they just don’t eat it. They’re just there to have some snuggles.”
Like families with their own holiday traditions, many of the Shedd’s animals have unique methods of feeding. Sea otters, like the Shedd’s Copper and Watson, use rocks and other tough surfaces to crack open hard shellfish. Clouded archerfish spit water at their prey and can leap up to 11 inches out of the water to catch insects.
