I want to strip and punch penguins in wet suits

Feeling stupid today? Well, at least you’re not Pierre the Penguin, a 25 year-old penguin in a wet suit. Seriously.

What’s black and white and warm all over? A penguin in a wetsuit, naturally. Sounds like a joke, but it’s quite serious for biologists at the California Academy of Sciences, who had a wetsuit created for an African penguin to help him get back in the swim of things.

Pierre, a venerable 25 years old, was going bald, which left him with an embarrassingly exposed, pale pink behind.

Unlike marine mammals, which have a layer of blubber to keep them warm, penguins rely on their waterproof feathers. Without them, Pierre was unwilling to plunge into the academy’s penguin tank and ended up shivering on the sidelines while his 19 peers played in the water.

“He was cold; he would shake,” said Pam Schaller, a senior aquatic biologist at the academy.

Pierre’s species of penguin is accustomed to temperate climates, unlike many of their cousins. The birds are nicknamed Jackass penguins because they make sounds similar to braying donkeys, quite startling the first time you hear it in an aquarium.

Look, I kind of want to bully Pierre because he looks like such a douchebag in his little jacket with his sore pink behind, but it kind of seems like this poor guy can’t catch a break. Not only can he not do traditional things like penguins do such as as swimming in the water and eating delicious fish, but he can’t even make normal penguin noises. And they call him a Jackass to boot! It sounds like Pierre is living the life of a children’s book or a Pixar movie. So yeah, I’d still probably kick him in his penguin stomach and laugh as he tipped over, but I’d take a little less joy out of it than previously thought. I’m only human.

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