The penguins crowded around a green wheelbarrow, eager to see what was making the clattering noise inside.
Moments later, more than 1,000 colorful pebbles dropped onto their habitat’s pavement. Each pebble was hand-painted with a design, from flowers and rainbows to logos for Spider-Man and Scottish soccer teams.
Dozens of penguins waddled to the pile in search of the perfect pebbles they would use to build nests and woo potential partners.
Patients at a nearby children’s hospital designed and painted the pebbles for Gentoo penguins’ breeding season at Scotland’s Edinburgh Zoo. Children watch on a live stream as penguins pick out pebbles, drop them into their nests and bow to their partners as a form of courtship.
The annual event is a boost for the children as well as the zoo’s more than 100 Gentoo penguins.
“I always get really emotional when the pebbles go in because it’s just the accumulation of a month’s worth of hard work for the children,” said Rebecca Parr, community and discovery officer for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which owns the zoo.
Zoo workers have visited the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh since 2022 in hopes of connecting patients to nature. Patients have designed items such as food and water containers for zookeepers to place in animal habitats.
While patients create the designs, Parr helps them relate to the animals by showing photos of animals undergoing medical procedures, including a polar bear getting blood drawn, a marsupial called a ground cuscus having a CT scan, penguins receiving injections and a baby red panda getting checked with a stethoscope.
The zoo for several years has invited visitors to decorate pebbles for penguins. In 2023, Parr showed up at the hospital with a load of pebbles from a home improvement store, along with pens with water-based paint that she said are safe for penguins.
Patients decorated 54 pebbles the first year, but it has become so popular, the number has grown each year. This winter, they decorated 1,020 pebbles, and outpatients sometimes schedule appointments the same day Parr visits just so they can paint.
“I truly could not have expected something as big to come from [something] as simple as giving a penguin a pebble,” Parr said.
At the zoo, Gentoo penguins begin building nests in February after staff members assemble about 50 nest rings and provide thousands of undecorated pebbles in their habitat. Many penguins court the same mate each breeding season — one closely watched couple, Muffin and Mittens, is a crowd favorite.
The nests keep penguins’ eggs dry and insulated from the cold. They also allow males to show off and court partners; females are attracted to larger nests with more pebbles because they give their eggs a better chance of survival. Once a pair is formed, both the male and female collect pebbles.
Patients painted the pebbles this winter with designs including hearts, trees, houses, caterpillars, penguins and even an engagement ring. Some designed pebbles for their preferred penguins — one patient painted a muffin on a half-dozen pebbles in hopes that Muffin the penguin would select one.
The pebbles were a hit. Penguins squabbled over them when a patient and a zookeeper unloaded them into the habitat on March 6.
Patients watched with excitement on a live stream as a penguin named Buzz snatched a pebble with a bumblebee design and dropped it beside his partner, whose name is Bumblebee. They hoped their pebbles would be plucked by some of the standout penguins — including Bertie, a ladies’ man who stirred drama by courting two females, and Kevin, a prankster who sometimes steals a hose from zookeepers.
Some penguins seem drawn to bright-colored pebbles, Parr said.
But Gentoo penguins’ priority is to collect as many pebbles as possible, said Michael Polito, associate professor of ocean science at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
“Penguins tend to be more interested in the quantity of pebbles than they are in the quality of any one pebble,” he said.
The zoo said each of its penguins’ nests contains about 500 pebbles. Penguins sometimes steal pebbles from each other’s nests, then chase each other to get them back.
When they lay their eggs in April, males and females take turns sitting on them and incubating them. At the zoo, there are some same-sex couples that are given eggs to incubate by staff members who take them from other nests when the eggs are in danger.
For example, a penguin named Mr Xmas sometimes falls on eggs and sits on them incorrectly, so zookeepers take eggs from him and give them to a same sex couple to incubate, then place infertile eggs in Mr Xmas’s nest.
The eggs hatch in May, when Parr asks hospital patients to name the chicks. They already have some suggestions this year, such as Truffle for Muffin and Mittens’ baby.
Chicks typically leave the nest when they’re between 3 and 4 months old to join a crèche, a group of young penguins who learn key skills such as swimming and socializing. They can start breeding a few years later, when they’ll begin selecting their own favorite pebbles from fresh batches.
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