Hi everyone and welcome to penguins rock here at Edinburgh Zoo! I'm joined by Dawn who's one of our penguin wranglers here at the Zoo. We've got three magnificent species, so let's find out more about them!

Tell us a bit more about our penguins and where we might find them in the wild?

We actually have quite a large colony here in Edinburgh. We have our gentoo penguins - those are medium-sized birds and they're quite distinctive as they have a white band that goes across top of their heads. We have our smaller species our northern rockhoppers which have this yellow crest coming out the top head. They're a much tinier species. And then we have our large species which are called king penguins. They look very similar to emperors.

Something in common with these species they're all sub-antarctic so you'd find them in areas like the Falkland Islands and for a little species like the rockhoppers in places like Tristan da Cunha and the Gough islands.

Here at Edinburgh Zoo we're really lucky we have this fantastic outdoor enclosure - one of the largest outdoor enclosures in the whole of Europe. You can see the great big pool behind us, it's about 1.2 million litres of water!

How do you look after such a big enclosure and so many animals?

With a lot of work and a lot of patience! So there's normally a team of at least two or three of us, working just with our penguins on a daily basis and as you can imagine a lot of that involves feeding. We actually hand-feed our penguins here in Edinburgh, now this is partly down to the fact we've got three different species and the northern rockhoppers get a different fish from the gentoos and the kings. It's also because of the number of birds that we have, so if we were to just go along and throw all their fish into the pool it'd be really difficult for us to be able to tell which birds are eating and which aren't. 

All our birds are actually identifiable because they've got flipper bands on. Males are on the right hand side, and females are on the left hand side and they're also colour coordinated depending on who that individual is, so we can look at those colour bands and we know exactly which bird that is.

 The rest of the day as i'm sure many of you are probably aware involves cleaning! So there's a lot of cleaning that's involved when you're looking after a penguin colony, especially one of this size! 

What about our ever important knighted penguin? Who is this and how do we tell them apart from the rest?

Tell us about our knighted penguin?

I mentioned our five king penguins earlier and one of those king penguins is particularly important and  because he's actually a knighted penguin! His full title is actually actually Brigadier Sir Nils Olaf, colonel-in-chief of the Norwegian military, guard of Norway and the kings guard.

This started back in the 80s when they were over for the military tattoo and they came to visit the penguins here in Edinburgh. They loved the king penguins so much that they decided to invite one of those king penguins to be their mascot for their king's guard and this has progressed throughout the years to the point where a few years ago he was actually made Brigadier! He was also made Baron of Bouvet Island, so he's not only got title but he also has land as well!

Why do we have penguins here at the zoo? What sort of threats are they facing out in the wild?

Unfortunately like many other animals there are a lot of issues that they're having to try and battle against out in the world. For penguins, the fishing trade is having a big impact - so that's us sending out ships and taking out tons and tons of different fish at a time and unfortunately it's leaving very little for the colonies of penguins out there. 

One particular species this has had a massive impact on is our northern rockhoppers. Northern rockhoppers were classed as an "endangered" species in 2008. There are less than half a million of them now left out in the wild. Overfishing has really had a massive impact and quite simply it means that the penguin parents who are on these islands trying to breed and rear their chicks cannot find enough fish left in the water for them now. 

There have been massive changes and the Tristan da Cunha government have actually now banned fishing around the breeding season for this species and we're also part of a research project out there looking at the dispersal of the different species. 

Here at the zoo we also do a lot of research with our birds, we look into even just simple things like how much vitamin supplements and what kind of fish they need. This is all be then fed-back to the conservation of the species out in the wild and hopefully one day we will see those numbers increase again!