2021-04-23 02:05:18 GMT2021-04-23 10:05:18(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
LONDON, April 22 (Xinhua) A blind penguin has had his sight restored by a team of eye specialists after keepers at Britain s Chester Zoo spotted he was having difficulty catching fish.
Four-year-old Munch, a Humboldt penguin at the zoo in northern England, was found to be experiencing blindness in both eyes from cataracts, a disorder which creates cloudy patches on the lens which get bigger overtime. We spotted that Munch was swimming slower than normal and was struggling to dive for the fish at feeding times and if a penguin can t catch a fish then you know something is amiss. That s when we called in the zoo s vets, said Sophie Bissaker, a parrots and penguin keeper at the zoo.
A RARE Humboldt penguin at Chester Zoo is well on the way to a full recovery after becoming the first of its kind to have sight-saving surgery. A team of eye specialists were called to help four-year-old Munch, a Humboldt penguin, who was experiencing blindness in both of his eyes from cataracts, a disorder which creates cloudy patches on the lens which get bigger overtime. Bird conservationists noticed the issue when Munch was having difficulty catching fish during feeding times and started bumping into other members of the zoo s colony of Humboldt penguins - a species listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as vulnerable to extinction.
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