Learn & Explore
Pocket Penguins App
Download our free app to stream our irresistible African penguin colony to your iPhone, Android, or AppleTV.
Warning: Cute alert! Pocket Penguins, streaming in real-time from the California Academy of Sciences, provides an intimate view into our live African penguin exhibit. Watch the birds swim, dive, flirt, nest, and relax from any one of three live webcams. Listen in as Academy biologists answer questions from visitors during meal time, daily at 10:30 am and 3 pm PST.
Get the app
Get a live view of our African penguin colony anywhere, anytime with the Pocket Penguins app.
Now available for Apple TV!
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About the exhibit
Steinhart Aquarium’s colony of African penguins can be found at the end of Tusher African Hall. A colony of 15 – 18 African penguins can be viewed through a window that is 26 feet wide and 16 feet tall.
The exhibit's 25,000-gallon tank has a jet system designed to simulate currents and stimulate the activities of the birds, while its life support system filters the water every 30 minutes and maintains seasonal water temperatures.
Steinhart’s penguins are part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Species Survival Program, aimed at ensuring the sustainability of a healthy, genetically diverse, and demographically varied population. African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) live off the coast of South Africa and Namibia. In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified the species as endangered, or at very high risk of extinction in the wild.
