Spheniscus demersus
jackass penguin

The Jackass Penguin is found only off the coast of South Africa. They breed on twenty-four islands offshore between Namibia and Port Elizabeth, South Africa. On the mainland, there are colonies of penguins at Betty's Bay and Simonstown, South Africa, and in Namibia.

The Jackass Penguin lives in the warmer latitudes between twenty and forty degrees south. This is not the only penguin species that lives in warmer climates. There are several other species that live on the warm shores of New Zealand, South America, and the Galapagos Islands. When they aren't in the tropical waters hunting for food, they live on the rocky shores where they reproduce and take care of their young.

The Jackass Penguin ranges from 30 to 100 cm in height. They are black on their dorsal side, face, flippers, and the top of their head. Their entire ventral side and lateral parts of the head and torso are white. Along the chest and sides are black horseshoe-shaped stripes. The body of the Jackass Penguin is shaped like a bowling pin and its feet are webbed.

When parents stop taking care of the young, they must learn to fend for themselves. Upon reaching maturity ( of which only 40% ever do) they find a mate and remain with them for the rest of their lives. The adults, when hunting in the sea, live in groups of fifty to one hundred. While nurturing the young, however, the adults may live a more secluded life. These penguins live and hunt together and may look for food 50 km from their nesting grounds. Jackass Penguins are able to get this far from shore because they can swim up to 7 km per hour.

Individuals communicate to one another by squawking. The Jackass Penguin gets its name from its loud braying call.

An interesting behavior of this penguin is its manner of cooling off in the heat. The Jackass Penguin spends most of the day in the water and spends the cool night on land. If they are unable to reach the water, as is the case when watching over the eggs, the Jackass Penguin can dissipate heat through its flippers, feet, and open beak.

The entire diet of the Jackass Penguin is marine. The penguin is known to eat twenty-five species of fish, eighteen species of crustaceans, three species of squid, and one species of polychaete. Forty-two percent of its diet is made up of fish.

There are no real negative economic effects of the Jackass Penguin. Due to their small numbers and size, penguins do not eat enough fish to be detrimental to that industry.

Penguins are a good source of guano. Guano is excavated from the shores, processed, and made in to fertilizer, which is then sold around the world. Another economic use people have for penguins is with their skins, which are used as gloves and other leather goods.

At the present, there are 120, 000 individuals left in the wild. This number is down ninety percent from sixty years ago. The biggest threats now to the Jackass Penguin are oil spills, over fishing of surrounding waters by people, and natural competition and predatation from seals and straw-necked ibis. Some fisherman claim that these penguins compete with them for fish, but because of the small size of the animal and the relatively small populations remaining, they consume only around 2900 tons of fish yearly. This number is too small to be detrimental to fishermen.

People have begun to take steps for preserving populations of the Jackass Penguin. All the islands that the penguins breed on have been made into nature reserves or national parks. Further, fences have been constructed around their breeding grounds. This prevents attacks on eggs and young by natural predators. Lastly, the South African National Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds has rescued many of the species from oil spills and has rehabilitated them for return to the wild.