A penguin believed to be the oldest of her kind in the world turned 38 years old with a sprat-acular celebration.
Matriarch Spneb marked the milestone with a birthday treat made of ice featuring her favourite fish.
According to global zoo records the Humboldt penguin is the oldest on the planet
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She lives at Paradise Park Wildlife Sanctuary Hayle, Cornwall which crafted an ice cake masterpiece for her loaded with her favourite treats including Cornish sardines and sprats.
Keeper Becky Waite said although Spneb was the eldest of the colony she still had a good appetite, enjoys a good nosey peek out of her nest box and happily supervises the youngsters like a feathery neighbourhood watch.
Humboldt penguins normally have a lifespan of 15-to-20 years in the wild, as reported by Whats The Jam.
She was born in 1988 at Birdworld in Surrey and went to Paradise Park shortly afterwards.
Spneb’s name is a fusion of the two types of medication she was given when she developed a fungal disease called Aspergillosis in 2007.
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Her name consists of a drug ‘Sp’ and a nebuliser ‘neb’.
It took four months to treat her but apart from some minor scaring to her lungs she recovered well.
There are 18 species of penguin, all ideally adapted to life in water.
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They have streamlined bodies, tightly packed waterproof feathers and special digestion.
They also have heavy bones to help them dive, and a layer of blubber for warmth. Flightless and ungainly on land, they reach great speeds underwater.
Their tongues are covered in spines to grip slippery fish.
Some penguins make a small nest of sticks, others use burrows.
The Humboldt’s carefully choose and arrange pebbles of just the right size before laying two white eggs.
This species is endangered in the wild partly due to human pollution.
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