(3) A group of penguins is called a Crèche!
A crèche is a group of chicks that band together for safety in numbers while their parents hunt. This term can also be defined as “a place where young children are cared for during the day while their parents do something else.” So, kind of like a penguin daycare!
Within breeding colonies, penguin parents are hard at work raising chicks. This requires sharing of guard duty while the other parent is feeding at sea to bring back food for the young ones. However, penguin chicks grow very quickly. After a certain point, usually around 4-5 weeks, the chicks are big enough that they no longer need the parent to help keep them warm and they require enough food that both parents need to be fishing more regularly to keep the chicks sufficiently fed. Chicks will group together for safety while their parents are at sea. These crèches are most often seen in surface-nesting species, as chicks of burrow-nesting species like the banded penguins and Little Blue penguin will usually remain in their own sheltered nest while waiting for their parents to return.
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