Penguins march on to ZooTube

By Claire Cohen
6th January 2011

They are the latest unlikely stars of the internet.
But you won’t see these celebrities stumbling out of a nightclub or appearing on a reality show any time soon.
Why? They’re penguins - and far too busy sliding around in the snow.

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Ice cool: Captured on a webcam the penguins of Edinburgh Zoo have become this winter's internet sensation

Captured on a webcam - which some wags have christened ZooTube - the penguins of Edinburgh Zoo have become this winter’s internet sensation.
The live feed shows the zoo’s Gentoo penguin population (they have a distinctive white stripe on their heads), although King penguins have been known to wander into shot, too.
While Edinburgh Zoo itself was closed over Christmas and the New Year, people from all over the world were logging on to watch the penguins at play and swimming and splashing about in their pool.

Playtime: Watching the zoo's Gentoo penguin population has been described as 'the best thing on the internet'

Twitter users described the webcam as ‘the best thing on the internet’, even admitting to being ‘jealous’ of the fun the creatures seemed to be having.
So popular was the webcam, that the huge number of people trying to access it even led to the internet site crashing.

To see the penguins log on to edinburghzoo.org.uk/EZPenguinCam.html.

Just make sure to do it before the sun goes down: the camera doesn’t have night vision - and trying to p-p-p-pick penguins out in the dark isn’t much fun.