Zoo officials have said a colony of 22 Humboldt penguins was fine when a zookeeper left Wednesday afternoon. Seven were found dead when staff arrived Thursday morning.
The zoo has called the deaths baffling and says an investigation is looking into what happened, including the possibility that something caused the penguins to panic before they drowned.
"It's hard to imagine that an animal like a penguin can drown overnight," Julie Woodyear with Zoocheck in Toronto said Friday.
"These are animals that can go and swim for very long periods of time, days on end."
"I don't think we're ever going to get the answers about what happened here, because there were no surveillance cameras in there. There's no good excuse for that."
Rebstock is at a loss to explain what may have happened to the penguins that drowned in what should have been a safe zoo environment. "I'm totally baffled by it as well."
Naturalist Brian Keating, a former employee at the Calgary Zoo, called the deaths sad and weird. He hopes staff figure out what went wrong so it doesn't happen again.
Having video footage would help solve the mystery, he added, but no one would think that such docile animals and avid swimmers would need to be monitored.
"You don't think of anything adverse happening. I mean, they're penguins."
rip babes
