From a basement room closed off from the public at the New England Aquarium, a trumpet blares.
As biologist Caitlin Hume opens the door, one half-expects to find a walrus or sea lion clamoring for lunch.
Instead, Hume and another aquarium employee emerge with the most unlikely visitors: four Little Blue penguins, the ?smallest penguin species in the world, and the one with the broadest range of ?vocalizations.
Native to the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, they can trumpet, bark, growl and chirp. And at just 2 months old, 10 to 12 inches tall and 2 1⁄4 pounds, they already are about as large as they will ever grow, says Hume, a penguin biologist.
Within the next two weeks, the public will get its first glimpse of the aquarium’s newest penguins, when they join more than two dozen other little blues in the 150,000 gallons of sea water that make up the main penguin exhibit, the aquarium’s most ?popular display.
“After ‘March of the Penguins,’ penguins ruled,” Tony LaCasse, the aquarium’s spokesman, says, recalling a man and his 6-year-old daughter who came to visit them every Saturday after seeing the Academy Award-winning 2005 documentary.
Although the four little blues were born only in April — each weighing a single ounce — and have yet to be named, they already eat solid food like anchovies and silversides, Hume says. And, to get them ready for their debut, they went for their first swim on Wednesday.
“We hung around to make sure they could get around and fit in with the colony,” she says. “Their parents don’t teach them how to swim. It’s just instinct.”
As adorable as they are, these are not the dancing feathered friends of the 2011 Jim Carrey movie “Mr. ?Popper’s Penguins.”
“They’re pretty cute, but they act very much like wild penguins; they don’t like to be touched,” says Hume, whose hands have the tiny peck marks to prove it.
Although they are not endangered like another species at the aquarium, ?African penguins, little blues do compete for a ?dwindling food supply due to over-fishing and predators, including whales, sharks, seals, birds, foxes, dogs and cats.
“The birds here are ambassadors for their species,” Hume says. “Here, people can see them and hear them and smell them. They can connect with a species like Little Blue penguins, who typically live on the other side of the world. We hope that by doing that, kids here will develop a passion for wanting to protect these animals and, ultimately, ?the planet.”
