At a rehabilitation center outside Santiago, veterinary staff have started fitting injured Humboldt penguins with snug red vests woven through with copper and zinc fibers, an experimental step meant to help the birds' wounds heal faster and stop them from undoing their own treatment. The project, developed with Buin Zoo and the nonprofit rehabilitation group Conservación Humboldt, is running as Chile's wildlife clinics report a difficult season for the coastal species.
The problem the vests are meant to solve is a simple one: penguins recovering from cuts and gashes tend to twist their long necks around to peck at the wound, often pulling out stitches in the process. The copper and zinc threads are intended to work as a kind of wearable antiseptic — the metals inhibit bacterial and fungal growth on the fabric, and zinc is also thought to help stimulate the new blood vessels needed for tissue repair. Similar microfiber vests have previously been tried on cats and dogs recovering from surgery, according to Buin Zoo's director, who said staff wanted to see whether the same approach could work on a very different kind of patient.
A hard year for a vulnerable species
Humboldt penguins, found along the coasts of Chile and Peru, are already listed as vulnerable by international conservation assessments, and this year's El Niño conditions have made things harder. Warmer Pacific waters push the cold-water fish the birds depend on farther offshore, forcing adults to travel longer distances to feed their chicks — sometimes abandoning nests altogether. Rescue centers along Chile's coast say they are seeing a steady stream of penguins that arrive weakened by hunger or injured by fishing nets and boat propellers.
Staff involved in the vest trial say early results are encouraging: the penguins appear to tolerate wearing them, and wounds monitored so far have looked to be healing in better condition than with bandaging alone, though researchers have not yet published a formal study of outcomes or specified how many birds have been fitted with the garment.
For now, the vests are being used alongside the antibiotics and traditional wound care already standard at Chile's rehabilitation clinics, rather than replacing them. If the informal results hold up, the teams involved say they intend to keep tracking recovery times through the rest of this year's rehabilitation season before drawing firmer conclusions about whether the approach is worth adopting more widely.
