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Huge Australian King Penguin Chick Pesto Grows into Social Media Star 

In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)
In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)
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Huge Australian King Penguin Chick Pesto Grows into Social Media Star 

In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)
In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)

A huge king penguin chick named Pesto, who weighs as much as both his parents combined, has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at an Australian aquarium.

Weighing 22 kilograms (49 pounds) at 9 months old, Pesto is the heaviest penguin chick the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has ever had, its education supervisor Jacinta Early said on Friday.

By contrast, his doting parents, Hudson and Tango weigh 11 kilograms (24 pounds) each.

Pesto’s global fame has grown with his size. More than 1.9 billion people around the world had viewed him through social media, an aquarium statement said.

He ate more than his own substantial body weight in fish in the past week: 24 kilograms (53 pounds), Early said.

The veterinary advice is that that quantity of food is healthy for a chick approaching adulthood.

His growth will plateau as he enters his fledging period. He has started to lose his brown feathers and will replace them with the black and white plumage of a young adult.

His keepers expect him to trim down to around 15 kilograms (33 pounds) in the process.

“He’s going to start losing that really adorable baby fluff. It might take him one to two months to really get rid of it. Then he’ll be nice and sleek and streamlined,” Early said.

But she expects Pesto will remain recognizable as the sought-after TikTok celebrity he has become for another two weeks.

For now, he's a star attraction.

“Such a small head for such a big body,” one admirer remarked on Friday as a crowd gathered against the glass of the penguin enclosure at feeding time.

Hatching on Jan. 31, Pesto was the only king penguin chick to hatch at the aquarium this year and the first since 2022, a year when there were six. The reason why there was none last year isn’t clear.

Adult king penguins weigh between 9.5 kilograms (21 pounds) and 18 kilograms (40 pounds), according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a global environmental group.

They are the world’s second largest penguin species, after the emperor penguin.

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Animals Found Living Underground Near Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents

Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS
Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS
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Animals Found Living Underground Near Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents

Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS
Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS

A deep-diving robot that chiseled into the rocky Pacific seabed at a spot where two of the immense plates comprising Earth's outer shell meet has unearthed a previously unknown realm of animal life thriving underground near hydrothermal vents.

Giant tubeworms - the world's heftiest worms - and other marine invertebrates such as snails and bristle worms were found using the remotely operated underwater vehicle SuBastian. They were living inside cavities within the Earth's crust at an ocean-floor site where the Pacific is 1.56 miles (2,515 meters) deep. All the species were previously known to have lived near such vents, but never underground, Reuters reported.

"We discovered vent animal life in the cavities of the ocean's crust. We now know that the unique hydrothermal vent ecosystem extends into the ocean's crust," said marine biologist Sabine Gollner of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, one of the leaders of the study published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

"To our knowledge, it is the first time that animal life has been discovered in the ocean crust," Gollner added.

The exploration was conducted at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge on the floor of the southeastern Pacific, running approximately parallel to South America's west coast. Earth's rigid outer part is divided into colossal plates that move gradually over time in a process called plate tectonics. The East Pacific Rise is located where two such plates are gradually spreading apart.

This area contains many hydrothermal vents, fissures in the seafloor situated where seawater and magma beneath the Earth's crust come together. Magma refers to molten rock that is underground, while lava refers to molten rock that reaches the surface, including the seafloor. New seafloor forms in places where magma is forced upward toward the surface at a mid-ocean ridge and cools to form volcanic rock.

The hydrothermal vents spew into the cold sea the super-heated and chemical-rich water that nourishes microorganisms.

"The warm venting fluids are rich in energy - for example, sulfide - that can be used by microbes, which form the basis of the food-chain," Gollner said.

Life flourishes around the vents - including giant tubeworms reaching lengths of 10 feet (3 meters), mussels, crabs, shrimp, fish and other organisms beautifully adapted to this extreme environment. The giant tubeworms do not eat as other animals do. Instead, bacteria residing in their body in a sack-like organ turn sulfur from the water into energy for the animal.

The researchers deployed SuBastian from the Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel Falkortoo to the vent site deep below. The robot was equipped with arms that wielded a chisel that the researchers used to dig into the crust and uncover warm and fluid-filled cavities where the tubeworms, bristle worms and snails were spotted.

"We used a chisel to break the rock. We dug about 20 cm (8 inches). The lava plates were about 10 cm (4 inches) thick. The cavities below the lava plates were about 10 cm in height," Gollner said.

Larvae from these animals may invade these subseafloor habitats, the researchers said, in an example of connectivity between the seafloor and underground ecosystems.

"It changed our view on connectedness in the ocean," Gollner said of discovering the subsurface lair.