Lovie? Valentina? Meet (and help name) the newest baby penguin at Camden’s Adventure Aquarium

Step up, Philly. Name this baby.

Camden’s Adventure Aquarium is seeking the public’s help in coming up with the perfect moniker for its newest arrival — a toddling baby blue penguin.

The little girl chick was born on Feb. 12 to penguin mama Maremma and dad Bloke.

Keeping with the Valentine’s Day proximity of her birth, the naming choices are:

Lovie

Rose

Valentina

Venus

The online voting contest runs through Tuesday, March 12.

Besides this latest chick, the aquarium also has welcomed two other female baby blues to its colony this mating season. Bananas Foster was hatched on Jan. 26, and Kiwi made her appearance on Feb. 6. They bring the Camden aquarium’s little blue colony population to 21.

Little blue penguins get their name from their plumage of slate-blue feathers and their stature as the smallest of the penguin species. Standing only about 13 inches when fully grown and weighing about 2 to 3 pounds, they are also known as fairy penguins. Their diet is composed of fish, squid, and krill, and they hail from the coasts of southern Australia and New Zealand.

The aquarium is also home to a colony of larger endangered African penguins, along with 15,000 more aquatic animals.

“The chicks are all doing really well,” said Jamie Becker, the aquarium’s chief biologist for the little blues. “All three are growing and acclimating into figuring out life here at the aquarium pretty well.”

For the first two and half weeks, the little blue chicks stayed with their parents, who fed them and catered to their every need. Their eyes were shut for the first week, and it takes two to three weeks before they can stand and start walking, Becker said.

Now all the babies are in the aquarium’s nursery, under the care of biologists.

“We teach them how to accept fish from us and start getting used to some of their tasks for the aquarium,” Becker said.

They’re given penguin plushies to cuddle with to sub for their parents.

“Some of them will kind of burrow underneath it, and the little plush wing will be resting over the chick’s back like a little half blanket,” Becker said.

As they get more curious, they’re given other enrichment items like Wiffle balls to interact with.

When they are about 60 days old, they will be reunited with the colony. They will have their waterproof feathers by then and be ready for the water. Swimming comes naturally.

The three chicks are part of the first clutch of this mating season. Becker said the aquarium still has until about mid-May to see if this year will bring more chicks.

In the wild, little blue penguins are only monogamous about half the time, but Maremma and Bloke have brought three chicks to the aquarium’s mating program. Pretty protective as little blue parents go, their first chick, Griffin, a male, is still part of the Camden colony. On Feb. 25, 2023, the couple welcomed another male hatchling. A naming contest was held for that baby, too. That little blue, Taz, is now at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

Now it’s your turn to help name Griffin and Taz’s little sister.

You can vote online at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LittleBlues2024.