Stunning Clip Shows a Blind Baby Penguin Swimming in the Deep Water for the First Time

There isn't any thing unusual about a penguin that loves to swin, but on an isolated bay in Australia, a baby penguin has developed the unusual habit of swimming in tight circles, not because of a disorder, but because, he is blind. Since his birth, Blindy, the baby blue penguin, is visually impaired. When Shireen Helps spotted Blindy crashing into the sides of a shallow pond, she adopted the bird and figured out a way for it to swim. Footage shared by Mashable Deals (@MashableNews) shows Helps guiding Blindy into its first swim.

The footage reveals Helps pulling out Blindy from a large green tub and placing it on a meadow. For a few moments, the penguin totters around the meadow, nervously shaking its beak. Then the video cuts to the scene where Helps appears with Blindy in her arms. Gently, she lowers the penguin into the shallow water pond and then tosses it into the deep water. The chick plunges into the water with a splash, generating ripples. At first, Blindy appears nervous, its head moving hither-tither while its body moves in the pre-programmed behavior of swimming in tight circles. Helps described that while the penguin struggled to swim properly, it appeared disorientated. But eventually, it began to learn. "If it gets dizzy going around one way, it changes direction and goes around the other way. So it’s really learning very well," she told The Metro.

Eventually, the penguin overcame its fear and started swimming more freely, moving on to a larger territory while shaking its flippers. According to the video, the little penguin was born with a malformed head and beak. Helps said that Blindy is getting the hang of navigating water without sight. “If it gets dizzy going around one way, it changes direction and goes around the other way. So it’s really learning very well,” Helps told the outlet.

When this footage was filmed, Blindy was just 12 weeks old and lived in New Zealand’s Flea Bay, home to three humans and more than 2,500 penguins. The baby had escaped its nest and got lost in a creek where a local farmer found it and eventually Helps. Helps and her husband Francis never intended to become penguin custodians. Instead, they moved to this area to raise cattle and sheep, till they realized one night that it was also home to penguins.

“And that’s when we started to look critically around our own backyard. We found dead penguins everywhere. We realized that predators were hitting into them and if somebody didn’t do something to save this colony, it would be lost,” his wife told the outlet. Ever since the couple started looking after the vulnerable seabirds, often nursing and feeding them. "A common thought is that penguins mate for life. Well, some of our monitoring notes make interesting reading if you’re into soap operas. So yeah, they can fool around," Helps shared. As for little Blindy, Helps believes that it is too disabled to return to the wild, but hopes a zoo will one day look after the penguin and offer him shelter.