Mumbai’s penguin house is full: a bigger home is already being built

The Humboldt penguin enclosure at Mumbai’s Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Botanical Garden and Zoo has officially run out of room. Four chicks born over the past year have now been declared healthy and added to the public count, taking the colony from 21 to 25 birds and filling the enclosure to its designed capacity.

In response, the civic body has set in motion a plan to expand the facility from its current size of around 2,000 square feet to 3,000 square feet, which will lift its capacity from 25 to 40 penguins. Officials said the expansion will be achieved by integrating an adjoining space within the existing facility, and work on the project is already underway.

The integration process is likely to begin toward the end of the year. During that phase, all 25 penguins may need to be shifted to the zoo’s quarantine facility for roughly two to three months while construction takes place, and officials said the penguin exhibit is likely to stay closed to visitors for that stretch.

The four chicks behind the current capacity crunch arrived in stages: a male named Pikachu in October 2025, a female named Lily in January 2026, and two more chicks, Leo and Bella, in February. Zoo officials said Pikachu, Leo and Bella were born to Donald and Daisy, while Lily’s parents are Popeye and Olive.

Because the enclosure is now at capacity, the zoo has also been trying to place some of its penguins with other institutions, first proposing exchanges with zoological parks elsewhere in the country and later offering birds as donations, though interest has been limited. ‘The infrastructure required to house Humboldt penguins is highly specialised and expensive. Maintaining the habitat involves advanced temperature control, water filtration and veterinary care, which many zoos are not equipped for,’ a civic official said, adding that a July 2023 proposal to exchange penguins with Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad has still not materialised.

The Humboldt penguins arrived at Byculla Zoo from South Korea in 2016 and have since grown into the zoo’s single biggest attraction, drawing thousands of visitors a week and a significant share of its revenue.

Wikimedia Commons/by Pradeep717