penguins

Meet Pingu and its BFF, a stuffed penguin. (No one knows yet if Pingu is a she or a he.) This baby had to be separated from its siblings because they kept eating all of its fish and it was getting runty. They removed the three-week-old Pingu, but then it got lonely! (Sigh.) Finally, they provided a cuddly, googly-eyed stuffed penguin for Pingue. It will be snuggling this amiable creature until it's strong enough to compete with the others in his colony. Click here to see other absurdly cute pics.

This technically falls under the sad 'n' cute category. Environmental disasters decimate animal populations, and oil spills are particularly horrible. These folks from IFAW (The International Fund for Animal Welfare), who rehabilitated penguin victims of an oil spill, got to release them back into the ocean. Warning though: this video, filmed in Brazil, moves from cute to sad, but ultimately back to cute again.

Although geeksugar got a sneak peek at the California Academy of Sciences when she attended a video game release party earlier this month, she didn't really get to explore the facility as much as she would have liked to. Thankfully, Wired gave us a behind the scenes look at the high tech penguin habitat, and explained the benefits of running the facility on computers to replicate the light and temperature the penguins would get back in their natural environment.

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I looooove webcams, and I've got some time to kill before the Fourth of July fun gets started. If you're also sitting around waiting for the food to be grilled, now's a great time to check out some live zoo action. To be fair, I've included a variety of creatures as well as three cams with baby animals . . . ummm, adoro. Go ahead, blow kisses at your screen, I'm not telling.

• Lions! My current zoo cam of choice, I love to check in to see what the baby lions are up to. Nevermind that I can't understand a single word on the site except for "live" (as this zoo is all the way in Norway), my glimpses of mama lion canoodling and caring for her four cubs are too precious to pass up.
• Giant Pandas! Classic cam with lots of action, check out the Giant Pandas live from the San Diego Zoo. There are seven pandas there which makes spotting at least one fairly likely. And don't forget the other cams of the Apes, Polar Bears, and Elephants afterwards.

See three more webcam suggestions when you read more

Great job captioning this silly photo! You made it quotable with these clever ideas:

Um, yes, I'll have the herring with the kelp and krill sides. –smistasan

No sir, I did not sign for the package. That is certainly not my signature. I would never order anything from Pengboy. –Kristabelle

Penguin: I think you took a wrong turn at the North Pole . . . –cmichel

Mr. Waddlesworth and his two friends are pulled from the London Zoo's pool to review the rules — Again . . ."No intentional splashing of patrons." —pcollinsb

Check out the rest of your suggestions here.
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It’s time to get clever! A picture is worth a thousand words but those messages vary from person to person. I think this picture is laughable, but what do you think of it? Suggest quotes or captions for this photo in your comments below, and I’ll do a roundup next week of some of my faves.

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Penguins are accustomed to cool waters with their thick layer of blubber and water-resistant feathers keeping them warm. But for Pierre, a 25-year-old African Penguin at the California Academy of Sciences, his feathers weren't holding up to their end of the bargain. For a strange and unknown reason, his protective layer of slick feathers began falling off, causing him to avoid the water and shiver on the sidelines while his pool mates played. Sad. So, how would scientists help him get back in the game? By fitting him with a customized wetsuit of course!

Since wetsuits allow humans to keep warm when diving into cold sea water, why not whip one up to help out a penguin? After making an attempt at warming him with a heat lamp, Pam Schaller, a senior aquatic biologist at the academy, called in the experts from a San Leandro-based dive shop to help get Pierre fitted with his new get-up. The first-of-its-kind suit fastens with Velcro in the rear and accommodates his flippers with openings in the sides. Schaller said:

I would walk behind him and look at where there were any gaps, and cut and refit and cut and refit until it looked like it was extremely streamlined.

And good news: thanks to the custom wetsuit, and creative thinking from Pam, Pierre's feathers have started to grow back and he's back in the water!

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