Losing children, double crazy penguins kill the same kind

After the broken egg was taken away by the zoo staff, the penguins were angry to attack the young birds and their parents around.

Penguins in Dresden zoo, Germany.(Photo: Zoo Dresden).

Humboldt penguins perform an unprecedented behavior in the Dresden Zoo in Saxony, Germany, on May 21. Before that, the staff was extremely happy to discover three pairs of penguins are hatching eggs. The two couples successfully hatched and began nourishing 4 young children.

However, the other pair's eggs cannot hatch. When it was sure it was broken, the staff took the nest and the eggs away. This makes the parents angry. When the employees leave, they attack a pair of successfully hatched birds, chase the enemy out of the nest and kill two young children. The young are developing well, weighing 300g and 500g.

Two small penguins are killed in the zoo.(Photo: Zoo Dresden).

Four days later, they continued to attack the other birds. This time, the pair tried to protect their cubs and die after the onslaught. Thanks to that sacrifice, the staff had enough time to intervene and rescue two young children. However, now they become orphans and need caregivers. Each calf weighs more than one kilogram, has known to eat fish and is expected to grow well.

Zoo staff were shocked by the behavior of the pair of penguins who lost their children."The egg has not been fertilized successfully. When the expiry date is very long, we decided to remove the egg because it was certainly broken and could adversely affect penguin's health , " Karl Heinz Ukena, zoo management, explained.

"In addition to nature, we have not recorded any cases of penguins acting like that," Ukena added. In the future, the zoo will not immediately remove broken eggs but leave them longer or replace them with an artificial egg of the same size and color.

The incident is a sad loss for the Humboldt penguin, which is endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List (IUCN). Due to climate change and narrow living environment, there are only about 32,000 adults in the world.

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