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Penguins, it so happens, don’t like to travel solo — at least not the five king penguins of Montreal’s Biodôme.

So when renovations began at the nature museum and the king penguins were moved from their sub-Antarctic island ecosystem to the Calgary Zoo in 2018, they all travelled together in the same crate.

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“We noticed that a penguin is more stressed alone, so it was decided to build a large crate, using a transportation palette as the base, and to transport them together,” explained Jean-Philippe Gagnon, one of the Biodôme’s three living-collection supervisors. They are responsible for about 40 employees who work with aquatic and terrestrial animals and with plants.

It is also stressful for the penguins not to see the source of sounds around them, he said, and so the crate incorporated grilles so they were able to see out. The crate was placed in the cargo section and a Biodôme veterinarian was on the same flight.