Zookeepers don’t yet know the sex of the first penguin chick hatched at the zoo, but they have already seen some of its personality.

“He’s very curious and looking around at everything,” penguin keeper Hannah Baker said.

She calls the chick a “he,” even though she doesn’t yet know whether “she” would be more appropriate.

“This morning he was playing with some of the sticks in the nest,” she said.

The African penguin chick hatched Oct. 30 from an egg that his mother, Skipper, had laid about a month earlier.

Since then, Skipper and the chick’s father, Easy, have been taking turns keeping the chick warm in their nest - a modified dog carrier inside an artificial cave in the exhibit.

Now weighing about 2 pounds - about half its fullgrown size - the chick is covered with soft, gray feathers. Those will be replaced with insulated, black and white ones as he gets closer to fullsize, in about two months.

In the meantime, zookeepers plan to take a DNA sample in the next week or two to determine the chick’s sex.

The chick’s home in the cave keeps it just out of sight of visitors. The zoo said in an announcement that the chick will be “off exhibit” until it is weaned or “if the parents allow it to wander out of the nest.”

Zoo spokesman Susan Altrui said officials didn’t announce the hatching until Wednesday because they wanted to get a good idea first about whether the chick would survive.

“So far, it’s healthy and strong and is gaining weightproperly,” Altrui said. “So far, so good.”

The hatching comes more than 1 1/2 years after the opening of the $2.4 million Laura P. Nichols Penguin Pointe exhibit, which was funded with private donations and $600,000 from a 2009 city bond refinancing.

Not long after that, the zooreceived word that two pairs among the 15 penguins had been selected by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan - jokingly called the “online dating service” by zookeepers - for breeding.

One couple, Roy and Mary Beth, had already made their lifetime bond before arriving at the zoo. But Easy and Skipper had yet to be hitched.

To encourage them to bond, zookeepers left them alone with each other for a few months in a holding area, with a pool of water to swim in and rubber hose pieces and sticks to build a nest with.

“Once they started showing pairing activities, like theywould build nests together and collect nesting material together, then we knew they were paired up enough to bring back and [be reintroduced] to the rest of the flock,” Baker said.

Last year, the zoo put both couples in a room, equipped with nest boxes, a pool and nesting material, and waited for them to breed. Skipper laid four eggs, and Mary Beth laid one, but none were fertile.

This year, zookeepers put the nest boxes in side-by-side caves in the main exhibit. The couples were left in the exhibit space at night while the other penguins were put in an adjacent building.

“You’re kind of forced to take shelter at night, so you’re kind of forced to pick a nest,” Baker said.

As is penguin custom, Easy and Skipper took turns sitting on the egg that would eventually hatch the chick. Now, one stays with the chick while the other gathers fish - to be regurgitated and fed to the chick - or stands guard outside the cave. The parents trade roles about once a day, Baker said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Skipper and Roy could be seen waddling just outside the caves, while Easy and Mary Beth were just out of sight, in the nest boxes.

Easy, in particular, has proven to be “extremely protective and extremely attentive to everything the chick needs,”Baker said.

“He guards the nest sometimes just so intensely that you can’t even walk within a certain few feet of it, or he’ll come out after you,” Baker said. If the chick makes a noise, “he stops what he’s doing and runs in there.”

She added, “he’s even tried to scoot Mom off the chick so he can incubate it.”

About three days ago, the chick stood up for the first time.

“He’s chewed on his dad a little bit,” Baker said. “He seems pretty playful and inquisitive.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 11/22/2012