For tourists visiting Melbourne, there are some sights you just can’t miss: the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Flinders Street Station, and now Pesto, the giant king penguin chick-turned-social media star.
Weighing in at 21kg at just nine months old, Pesto has captured the attention of millions since going viral last month and inspired many TikTok users to make the pilgrimage to SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium’s penguin exhibit just to see the “big unit” for themselves.
“Pesto has reached more than 1.9 billion people across the globe, so he really is a draw card for visitation to Victoria,” Michaela Smale, senior keeper at SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium, told 9news.com.au.
Born in January, Pesto seemed like a normal, healthy chick.
Then he started growing and simply didn’t stop, leaving his keepers shocked.
By six months old, he dwarfed both of his parents, Hudson and Tango, and at nine months old he now weighs over 20kg.
For context, his parents weigh about 10kg each.
That officially makes Pesto the largest king penguin chick the aquarium has ever seen, and they’re looking into global penguin records to see if he’s broken any around the world.
“Pesto’s size is a combination of good parenting and dad’s genes,” Smale said, adding that the chick’s record growth has been “surprising but not alarming” for keepers.
And Pesto shows no signs of slowing down.
He currently eats 25 fish a day and Smale confirmed the aquarium has had to increase spending on fish to accommodate his huge appetite.
Fortunately, all the penguins are on a closely monitored diet so there’s no risk of the big lad overeating.
Pesto is expected to keep putting on weight over the next few weeks before he fledges, at which point he’ll slim down and start to shed his brown downy feathers for a proper waterproof set.
“Average adult king penguin weighs about 11-15kg, so he’s expected to slim down a fair bit with the expectation he’ll land around 15kg,” Smale said, though only time will tell exactly how big Pesto will be as an adult.
He’s already bigger than most of the adult king penguins he shares an enclosure with, including his own parents, and “holds his own” with the other birds.
“He’s very sure about what he wants with his parents,” Smale said.
“Pesto definitely has an aura of confidence the keepers haven’t seen before, which is potentially down to his size.”
Since going on display in April, Pesto has become a social media darling and his online popularity exploded this month when the aquarium posted his gender reveal.
Because king penguins are non-sexually dimorphic, meaning they don’t have externally visible traits that allow keepers to easily distinguish sex, a blood sample had to be sent for testing to confirm Pesto’s gender.
When the results came back and revealed he was a boy, keepers celebrated with a custom cake and a video that racked up views on Instagram and TikTok.
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But that was nothing compared to the clips members of the public have shared, which have amassed tens of millions of views in the last few weeks.
“Giant f—— baby. I [love] Pesto,” one TikTok user wrote over a clip with 6.2 million views at the time of writing.
“POV: you go to the aquarium to meet Pesto, the record breaking … baby penguin who weighs 20kg,” another wrote over their clip with more than 7 million views, which they captioned, “Pesto has been bulking big time”.
The chick has become so popular on TikTok that if you type “pesto” into the app’s search bar, the first result is “pesto the penguin” rather than anything to do with the sauce.
His viral fame has had a huge impact on SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium too.
“We have seen an increase in social traffic, web traffic and of course footfall,” Smale said.
“People are no longer coming to Melbourne just for the shows, music and coffee, they’re coming to see Pesto.”