A marine sanctuary in the north of Great Britain had to put penguins on antidepressants: the animals suffer from winter blues because of bad weather.
It’s not just humans who suffer from seasonal depression, penguins too. Recently, 12 Humboldt penguins housed in the Scarborough Marine Sanctuary (North Coast of Great Britain) have been on antidepressants because they are suffering from the winter blues. Their caretakers noted signs of stress in all of the animals.
For the past few weeks, the Humboldt penguins have been experiencing the same storms as the English, but not living them as well. These birds are native to the Pacific side of Peru and Chile, where the climate is not much better. The ocean is fed by the cold Humboldt sea current. Climatic anomalies, triggered by the “El Niño” air mass sometimes lead to torrential rains. But the weather is never as long as in the UK.
Birds with fragile health
These penguins “just aren’t used to this kind of bad weather over such a long period of time,” says one of the caretakers. Direct consequence of this winter blues: the penguins stay warm instead of going into the water, their natural environment. This reaction presents a danger to their health. The antidepressant tablets will therefore help them to return to the water, but also to preserve their immune system, which is extremely fragile.
This isn’t the first time the fragile health of Humboldt penguins has made the news. In 2005, 6 males from the Bremerhaven zoo (Germany) had developed homosexual behavior, which had forced the officials of the establishment to import females from Sweden. This species is currently threatened with extinction in its natural habitat due to global warming, overfishing and the proliferation of egg-eating rats.
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