Mumbai’s penguin exhibit may go dark for months: here’s why

Visitors to Mumbai’s Byculla Zoo may find its most popular exhibit closed for a few months later this year. Officials at the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Botanical Garden and Zoo say the Humboldt penguin enclosure has reached its designed capacity of 25 birds, and all of them may need to be temporarily shifted to the zoo’s quarantine facility while the enclosure is expanded.

The capacity crunch follows the birth of four chicks over the past year, kept out of public view until they were confirmed healthy. A male, Pikachu, arrived in October 2025, a female named Lily in January 2026, and two more chicks, Leo and Bella, in February — taking the colony from 21 to 25 penguins. Officials said Pikachu, Leo and Bella are offspring of Donald and Daisy, while Lily was born to Popeye and Olive.

To accommodate the growing population, the civic body plans to expand the enclosure from around 2,000 square feet to 3,000 square feet, raising its capacity from 25 to 40 birds, by integrating an adjoining space into the existing facility. Preparatory work is already underway, and the main integration is likely to begin toward the end of the year — the period during which the penguins would move to quarantine and the exhibit would shut to visitors.

Officials said the zoo has also been trying to relocate some penguins to other institutions to ease the pressure, approaching zoological parks across the country with proposals first for exchanges and later for outright donations, but has found little interest so far. ‘The infrastructure required to house Humboldt penguins is highly specialised and expensive. Maintaining the habitat involves advanced temperature control, water filtration and veterinary care, which many zoos are not equipped for,’ a civic official said.

A July 2023 proposal to exchange one male and one female Humboldt penguin with Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad, made as part of a seven-species exchange list, has still not gone through.

The Humboldt penguins came to Byculla Zoo from South Korea in 2016 and have since become its biggest draw, pulling in thousands of visitors every week and a significant share of the zoo’s revenue.

Wikimedia Commons/by Pradeep717