Happy Feet not such a happy chappy
File photo: A Fiordland penguin is at the centre of a custody dispute after swimming 3000km. File photo: A Fiordland penguin is at the centre of a custody dispute after swimming 3000km.
Wellington - Officials say an Antarctic penguin that wound up stranded on a New Zealand beach and eating sand is recovering after a very human treatment: an endoscopy.
It may be months before the young emporer penguin dubbed Happy Feet recovers.
Doctors guided a camera on a tube through the penguin's swollen intestines and flushed its stomach to remove the swallowed sand, which it apparently mistook for snow. Penguins eat snow to hydrate themselves.
Zoo spokeswoman Kate Baker said the penguin is now dining on fish slurry.
The bird was first spotted last week. Emperors typically spend their entire lives around Antarctica, rarely encountering humans.
Conservation official Peter Simpson says it could remain at the zoo for three more months recovering. - Sapa-AP