Penguin Park

By Romana Annette  05/05/2009

The penguin exhibit worked fine for years at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.  Park officials had always assumed that penguins were quite docile and benign.  Then reports trickled out of various zoos that penguins were capable of much mischief.  It seemed like some kind of tall tale, until they saw the incriminating documents.

One clever group of penguins escaped from the New York City Zoo for a night on the town.  It was decided to ship them back to Antarctica, but they commandeered a freighter and ended up on the island of Madagascar.

Zoo officials suddenly realized that they would have to redo the penguin exhibit to make sure that no penguins could casually roam Seattle streets and hijack ships.  No expense was spared for the new, really secure quarters.

The front part of the new exhibit has walls that no penguin can climb.  The rear of the enclosure is more of a problem, so it was decided to protect it with an electric fence.

It first, it was believed that 10,000 volts would be enough, since this amount was enough to stop a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  However, through trial and error, it was learned that only 15,000 volts would persuade penguins to turn back.