Looking For Love

Aquarium's Penguins Looking For Love

April 3, 2009 - 10:18 PM
Will Carr

Love is in the air at the Tennessee Aquarium. For the first time Aquarium employees are trying to mate the 19 penguins that are currently on display.

The Aquarium gave these penguins nesting materials last year but ended up with no chicks. So this year one employee went to Antarctica and brought back the same rocks that penguins in the wild use to build nests where they mate. So with the mood rocks in place there are now a number of penguins who are looking for love.

The time is just right inside of the Tennessee Aquarium these days. No these penguins aren't learning to dance, or trying to break out captivity and they're certainly not trying to wage war on the city. Instead these Gentoo's and Macaroni's are thawing their hearts and trying to mate for the first time.

"They kind of have an idea of what's going on but they haven't really done it before so we'll just have to see how they do," Lori Beth Aldrich, who works with the penguins at the Aquarium, says.

To help Aldrich tells us the Aquarium brought in 900 pounds of mood rocks.

"As soon as we give them the rocks it's like setting the mood - it gives them that final little thing that final little urge they need to build those nests and lay those eggs," Aldrich says.

You can see the penguins picking up the mood rocks and taking them back to their partners.

But the penguins who haven't found partners yet aren't wasting anytime hopping in and trying to find the penguin with those special kind of qualities.

"No Berry White, no Marvin Gaye, but they were very interested in building the rocks in just twenty minutes - they were ready to go," Aldrich says.

And while these penguins don't like to kiss and tell, you can see they're forming some rock solid relationships.

"With penguins we've only seen a couple of them mate since we've we put the rocks in here but they mate many many many times and you never know which time actually works," Aldrich says.

Aquarium employees who work with the penguins tell us the mating will be a success if they see any eggs laid this year. And if you'd like to keep tabs on the penguins you can watch them live the Aquarium's webcam - http://www.tnaqua.org/Animals/Penguins.asp.

Story and image courtesy of News Channel 19, Chattanooga, @
http://www.newschannel9.com/news/penguins_977128___article.html/aquarium_rocks.html