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Rory Wilson, Professor of Aquatic Biology, Swansea University: Penguins need above all, they need other penguins to be happy, but they also need enough water and they need enough land and enough natural conditions to be happy. 

CNN Anchor: What about the three main issues that the 3MPs have been talking about? That is the space, the fresh air and the lack of natural light. How important are those three things to these penguins? 

Rory Wilson: They're 4Gentoo penguins and the picture I have seen shows them sort of on ice or something that looks like ice, and if they're southern Gentoo penguins, then they're the sort of ice-obvious. They're birds that need to spend a lot of time on ice, and they live in a place with very little 5bacterial load and very little 6fungal spores, and so actually the idea that you could take these birds and just 7plonk them outside in the UK and say they'd be happy might give them 8severe problems. 

You actually can't put it in normal fresh air without 9subjecting it to fungal spores, and so the air that goes into 10exhibits that typically have things like 11emperors and 12chinstrap and 13Adelian Gentoo penguins from that part of the world, have to have highly 14filtered air, so you can't actually take them and put them in fresh air unless you're in Antarctica. 15With respect to the space and the daylight, well, I don't know what light 16regime they have. 

Good zoos, if they've got birds 17in housings like that have 18alter the light regime to reflect the light regime they would have in the wild so obviously darker in their winter and lighter in their summer and then 19with regard to the space to be honest I mean I think the husband do requirements for penguins they say they need the water to be four foot deep or something and you know for penguins that's that is ridiculous. I mean, Gentoo penguins dive to 400, 500, 600 feet. So, four feet is not going to cut it. And I think the exhibit we're talking about is seven feet. And that doesn't cut it either. 

But there's not a penguin exhibit in the world that actually does cut it. You need enough space for them to swim properly. That means 20porpoise and enough, I guess, 21water activity for them to be excited by being in the water and also to 22bounce around on land and do the stuff they normally do.