A zoo has named a pair of vulnerable penguins after the owners of Wrexham AFC.

A zookeeper at Chester Zoo decided to name the Humboldt penguin chicks after Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney as the club is one of their “favourite local football teams”.

The birds are native to the Chile and Peru coasts in South America.

The birds’ namesakes bought the North Wales-based football club in 2020 and it recently returned to the English Football League for the first time in 15 seasons.

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According to the zoo, the penguins are known for their “charismatic personalities” and “unique black and white markings”.

The two, who hatched earlier this year, have now taken their first swimming lessons and joined the zoo’s adult colony of 45 penguins.

Zoe Sweetman is the team manager of penguins and parrots at Chester Zoo.

She said Ryan and Rob had been “closely cared for by their parents while snuggled up in their nests”.

“But now they’ve shed their fluffy grey feathers and developed their multi-layered waterproof feathers,” she said.

“Watching as they tentatively make a splash is a real joy and within minutes they did what comes naturally to them, and now they’re zooming through the waters at high speed.”

Read more:
Wrexham: The Hollywood dream that became a reality
McElhenney throws Vegas pool party for Wrexham players
Reynolds tries to convince Gareth Bale to play for Wrexham

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The Humboldt penguin is classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list of threatened species.

Some key factors contributing to their decline according to the IUCN include overfishing, pollution and climate change.

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