From Dora’s vendetta against Tall Matt to Mr. Mac stealing his blind girlfriend’s fish, there’s never a dull moment in Penguin Cove. Alex Casey talks to the humans behind New Zealand’s most surprising online gossip page.
For more than a decade, Penguin Cove in the National Aquarium of New Zealand has been the scene of more twists and turns, backstabbing and heartbreak than a Love Island producer could ever imagine. There’s the tense love triangle that saw “guy” Eric face off against “charming” Squishy for the affections of “bombshell” Pipi. There are crowd favorites Captain and Flip, he’s missing an eye and she’s missing a flipper. There’s the explosive fight between same-sex couple Dave and Kaewa, which saw Dave kicked out of their burrow and banished to the “vacation house” during weeks.
And, just like Love Island, millions of fans around the world tune in for their regular dose of poolside drama and the memes that accompany it. The National Aquarium shares the ups and downs of the creek on their Facebook page for years, launched with a bang in July 2017 with their now iconic “Naughty” and “Good” penguins of the month. “Naughty Penguin: Timmy. I stole fish from another penguin and pushed another penguin,” the first post read. “Good Penguin: Betty. Good swimmer and patiently waits for her fish.
Felicity Kibble, marketing consultant for the National Aquarium, remembers being at her computer for that very first message. “After a while, the program reached more than 20,000 people, and then the number of comments and people reached continued to climb,” she recalls. In a few hours, the publication had reached two million people and comments poured in from all over the world. “Timmy was trapped!” » wrote Shannon from Missouri, accompanied by a FREE TIMMY sign. “Good on you Betty,” wrote Sini from Brighton. “Keep up the good work, my love.”
Kibble began fielding calls from media outlets in the UK, Australia and the US and the penguin drama quickly made headlines on the front pages of Buzzfeed, Bustle and Bored Panda. “It was amazing that a simple image of a sign in the aquarium could generate so much interest,” she says. “From there, we made sure to continue publishing every month.” Highlights from the early days include Tux (Naughty, February 2018), who “pushed Timmy off the pier after it took him an hour to walk there” and resident bad boy Mo (Naughty, May 2018)’ for being downright obnoxious.”
Since then, the appetite for penguin gossip has only become more voracious. The introduction of the Penguin of the Year competition in 2018 saw people around the world vote for their favorite candidate. Danielle Berryman, who was living in Cyprus at the time and had never visited New Zealand let alone Napier, felt a strong affinity with Mo. “He was in the bad books quite often, and a friend joked that that he was a bit like me,” she said. “It became a running joke that Mo was my spirit animal and I really began to look forward to his antics.”
She took her dedication even further when the competition was introduced and told her friends that she would get a tattoo of the evil Mo if he ever triumphed. For three years, Mo’s fans campaigned in vain, until he won the top spot in 2021.”Loved for his mischievous antics, Mo’s group of passionate fans campaigned hard and after three years as a finalist, he finally has his palms on the Penguin of the Year trophy,” the judges wrote on Facebook. Berryman, in Cyprus, kept his word by getting a large, full-color tattoo of Mo on his ankle.
Nowadays, there are penguins waddle on TikTok and the Facebook page removed the monthly “Naughty” and “Good” awards for a less educational Penguin of the Month award. “We thought we could let people decide whether they think the behavior is good or bad,” says Rebekah Cuthbert, a bird supervisor at the National Aquarium and a key informant on penguin drama. “You know, is Burny a naughty penguin for ditching her boyfriend to go hang out with the other girls?” Or is she a good penguin displaying girl power? We are not here to judge. »
Not only did the online buzz spark a frenzy of global attention, but it also provided an opportunity to raise awareness of how these kororā (little penguins) ended up in the cove. The rehabilitation space opened in 2012 after the closure of a neighboring facility and helped save a colony of homeless penguins. Three of those original cast members – Betty (“burst in front of the other penguins during feeding times”), Draco (“tricked the new keepers into feeding her twice”) and Mr. Mac (“stole his girlfriend’s fish even though she is blind) – remain there today.
“You get to know them the same way you get to know your own pets,” says Cuthbert, who has worked at the cove since it opened more than a decade ago. “There are very, very different personalities throughout the colony.” If she were to present them as reality TV archetypes, it wouldn’t take long to check all the boxes. “Mo is the bad boy because he attacks people for fish,” she says. “But Martin is the real villain: he sneaks into the bushes and waits for unsuspecting penguins to walk past them, then ambushes them on the way to the feeding station.”
Pipi is the bombshell of the cove “because she pits the two boys against each other” and Eric is the comic relief. “He’s a real clown, he climbs on the pier and pushes the other penguins away just for fun.” Captain and Flip are the golden couple – Tommy and Molly, Art and Matilda, Angel and Brett. “They are really good, very strong parents, they build a nice nest, they are always together. Real model penguins,” says Cuthbert. Mr. Mac and Draco are the drop kicks. “They don’t like to go swimming and would rather sit at home and laze around.”
As for the lonely heart, the outcast, the black sheep, Cuthbert says she is of all time favorite penguin Dora matches the file perfectly. “She did that to herself,” she laughs. “Basically, she decided she was better than everyone and didn’t really want to associate with the other penguins.” Dave tried to woo Dora for an entire breeding season, but Cuthbert says she wasn’t interested. “She really didn’t like him. He was going to visit her at her house and she would immediately go to another burrow – she wouldn’t even be in the same room as him.
Perhaps it was her misandrist side: she won Naughty Penguin in November 2017 for “attacking our male gatekeepers; specifically, Tall Matt” and maintained her streak until March 2022, when she won again for “an ongoing vendetta against male goalkeepers.” Cuthbert said this kind of political action was typical. “We have a keeper who stands on a little pier while we tell people about the penguins and Dora will often stand next to them,” she explains. “If she didn’t like them, she would peck them in the ankles.”
Unfortunately, Dora died last month at the age of nine after a long battle with spinal problems. “That’s a pretty tough question for me because we raised her from five days old,” Cuthbert says. “It’s funny because all the penguins are your favorite at different times, like Mo is funny when he throws sand in people’s faces, but out of all the years and all the penguins, Dora was my favorite.” Saying goodbye, she says, was one of the hardest days she’s ever had on the job. “Normally I’m pretty good because it’s part of the job. But I guess…I really loved him.
By sharing all the ups and downs of Penguin Cove and the personalities who call it home, Cuthbert hopes they can continue to raise awareness of how people can help. Although not as steep as the hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin, the kororā population continues to decline in Aotearoa. All the penguins in the cove have been rescued and almost all have suffered preventable injuries: Flip lost his fin after getting tangled in fishing line, Lulu has brain damage after being hit on the head at sea, and several were attacked by cats and dogs.
There are two main messages Cuthbert wants to convey to people after getting to know these little penguins better. “If you see trash on the beach, pick it up and throw it in the trash,” she says. “That’s how Flip lost his pinball machine.” The second message is that people keep their dogs on leads on the beach to prevent them from harming vulnerable nesting birds in the area. “To a dog, the penguin smells like a nugget and makes a loud squeaking noise like the toy at home, so why wouldn’t he want to play with it?” she says.
As with all upcoming stories at Penguin Cove, the molting period will soon see the penguins fatten up to enter hibernation until they lose all their old feathers. “They gain about 60 percent of their body weight and look just hilarious,” says Cuthbert. “They are about the size of a football, while looking like a half-plucked chicken. Some are half bald with a mohawk and others have a ring of feathers around their neck like a boa. The current plan is to share some of the before shots online before they come out “shiny and beautiful with their new summer bodies.”
Outbursts and tantrums, heartbreaks and tears – these are all part of life at the cove. Cuthbert says they have been asked several times over the years if they would consider a Meerkat Mansionstyle reality series documenting the drama, but the answer has always been the same. “Frankly, penguins do only so many things,” she says. “It would also take up a large portion of my day and I wouldn’t have time to do all the other necessary tasks.” In another parallel with Love Island, their the house stinks too if left unattended for too long.
“It’s not a glamorous job, that’s for sure,” laughs Cuthbert. “They’re very dirty and very smelly at the end of the day, but it’s still worth it.”