Penguin escapes from wildlife exhibit in Japan; found at beach 45 kilometers away

Himakajima is an island in Aichi Prefecture’s Mikawa Bay, south of Nagoya, with a population of less than 2,000 people. During the recently concluded summer vacation period, a temporary penguin exhibit was set up on one of the island’s beaches, and everything seems to have gone well until the last day of the event.

On August 25, as the organizers were taking down the installation, they wanted to let the penguins cool off by taking a swim in the ocean while everything was being packed up. Unfortunately, while a containment net had been put in place to keep the animals from swimming out to the open sea, one of them, a 6-year-old cape penguin named Pen-chan, somehow slipped through the enclosure.

Penguins, of course, are not native to Japan, and Penters, the organization that organized the event, was particularly worried about Pen-chan, since she was born and raised in captivity, and hasn’t ever had to hunt for food in the wild. Unfortunately, a search of the island’s coastlines failed to find the animal, and an approaching typhoon prevented the use of boats to expand the search to the surrounding seas.

There was a brief glimmer of hope, though, when Pen-chan was spotted at a different island, Shinojima, to the south of Himakajima.

▼ About three kilometers of sea separate the two islands.

After the Shinojima sighting, though, several days went by with no developments, until finally someone again saw Pen-chan on September 8, a full two weeks after the escape. Had she made a U-turn and headed back to Himakajima? Nope, she’d done the exact opposite, travelling all the way around the tip of the Chita Peninsula and up its west coast to Shin Maiko Marine Park in the town of Chita.

▼ Google Maps doesn’t show the sea route that Pen-chan presumably took, but it’s approximately 45 kilometers from Himakajima to Shin Maiko Marine Park.

▼ Video of Pen-chan hanging out at Shin Maiko Marine Park

After a park worker spotted Pen-chan and called out to her, the escapee penguin came over and was taken into custody, with Penters coming to pick her up soon after. She’d suffered no injuries during her two weeks surviving in the wild, and while she’d lost a little weight, she’d apparently managed to find some sort of sustenance, and is reportedly in good health and fine spirits, though Penters is keeping a close eye on her condition before returning her to the exhibition rotation.

Source: CBC News, FNN Prime, Sankei Shimbun

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Penguin escapes from wildlife exhibit in Japan; found at beach 45 kilometers away

Penguin escapes from wildlife exhibit in Japan; found at beach 45 kilometers away

Penguin escapes from wildlife exhibit in Japan; found at beach 45 kilometers away

Penguin escapes from wildlife exhibit in Japan; found at beach 45 kilometers away

Penguin escapes from wildlife exhibit in Japan; found at beach 45 kilometers away