(with files from Canadian Press)
There are 18 penguin species around the world, and among them the African penguin is the most endangered.
Two pairs of African penguins at the Toronto Zoo have laid four eggs which hatched successfully in February and March, although with the help of surrogate parents for three of the four eggs.
The chicks are now large enough and mobile enough to be hand-fed fish. They could join the other penguins in about 80 days.
Although there are about 20,000 breeding pairs, overfishing for the pelagic fish the penguins eat, as well as oil pollution in the sea, have reduced their population to about a tenth of what it was a hundred years ago.
The fact that three of the chicks born at the zoo are females is good news as most of the African penguins in North American zoos are males.
From Toronto Zoo-Facebook
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