When do King Penguins stop growing? Age and all about Pesto, the viral internet sensation

Animal lovers are going gaga over Pesto, a nine-month-old king penguin, who lives in Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium in Australia. The creature is roughly three feet tall, making it the largest king penguin the aquarium has seen to date. His height, and weight of nearly 23 kgs make him even taller than his caregiver parents, Tango and Hudson.

Social media users were surprised to learn that the king penguin has a huge appetite of about 53 pounds of fish in one week. Furthermore, it is also worth noting that Pesto’s biological father, Blake, is also one of the largest and oldest penguins currently at the Australian aquarium.

Pesto was born in January, this year, and weighed 200 grams at the time of birth. When he was three months old, he was 9.1 Kg. Being the second largest species of penguin on Earth, it keeps growing until it reaches maturity, and starts breeding, which as per the Australian Antarctic Program occurs after they turn six years old.

Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium in a statement revealed more:

“The combination of good genes and good parents explains his current weight, but he will lose a lot of this when he fledges and develops his adult feathers.”

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A recent video added by the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium in Australia depicted the gender reveal celebration for Pesto

The popularity of Pesto grew after the aquarium hosted a gender reveal party for the penguin, wherein they stated how they had to take a blood sample of the animal and send it for lab testing. A video showing the whole process and the celebrations stated in the voice-over was released:

“That was done a couple of weeks ago, and it’s finally come back to us to say he’s a boy.”

Furthermore, Michaela Smale, a caretaker at the aquarium also spoke about the penguin’s popularity and said:

“Pesto has reached more than 1.9 billion people across the globe, so he really is a drawcard for visitation to Victoria.”

The caretaker also revealed that due to the growing popularity, more and more people are coming to see the king penguin, which in turn is increasing the footfall of the aquarium. Michaela said:

"We have seen an increase in social traffic, web traffic and, of course, footfall.”

Furthermore, the aquarium stated that the baby king penguin might lose a lot of weight once he develops his adult coat.

As per Oceanwide, King Penguins grow up to 70 to 100 cm in height and weigh no more than 16 Kg. They mostly rely on small fish, and squid amongst other sea animals for food. The website also stated that the average life span of the penguins is mostly 25 years, and there are close to 2 million breeding pairs currently in the world.