Emperor penguin ‘Gus’ released at sea 20 days after waddling onto Australian beach
The bird – who soon loved seeing his reflection in a mirror – was found, very undernourished, on sand dunes 3,500km north of the Antarctic coast
The only emperor penguin known to have swum from Antarctica to Australia was released at sea 20 days after he waddled ashore on a popular tourist beach, officials said on Friday.
The adult male was found on November 1 on Ocean Beach sand dunes in the town of Denmark in temperate southwest Australia, about 3,500km (2,200 miles) north of the icy waters off the Antarctic coast, the Western Australia state government said.
He was released from a Parks and Wildlife Service boat on Wednesday.
The boat travelled for several hours from the state’s most southerly city of Albany before the penguin was released into the Southern Ocean, but the government did not give the distance in its statement.
He had been cared for by registered wildlife carer Carol Biddulph, who named him Gus after the first Roman emperor Augustus.
“I really didn’t know whether he was going to make it to begin with because he was so undernourished,” Biddulph said in video recorded before the bird’s release but released by the government on Friday.
