The penguin population at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium is growing by three chicks.
Two rockhopper penguins and one gentoo born between Dec. 11 and 15, 2014 were brought to the zoo’s main penguin habitat Thursday.
WATCH: Syracuse zoo welcomes three new baby penguins
Now that they are nearly three months old, they are all almost adult-sized and ready to join the rest of the flock. However, they will be kept in a separate playpen until all their adult feathers have grown.
The unnamed trio brings the number of penguins at the zoo to 80, 15 of which were raised in the facility from birth in the last four years.
The rockhopper is listed as vulnerable and the gentoo is near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of threatened species.
One of the zoo’s primary missions is conservation, and these three chicks are helping pull both species off of the endangered list.
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