At just 9 months old, Pesto is a “moving feather poop machine” and a celebrity at the Sea Life Aquarium in Melbourne, Australia.

The little king penguin already weighs 22.5 kg and is taller than its parents. Pesto eats around 30 fish a day – twice the amount of the average adult penguin and – as he is still a baby – he also gets supplementary food from his parents.

The adult king penguin has a height of 70 cm to 1 meter and weighs from 9.3 to 18 kg.

All this food results in him “pooping” every 15 minutes, creating a “headache” for the keepers of the penguin area, who have to constantly clean up the area.

But all this will soon change as Pesto will soon become an adult – he is already losing his baby wings and will start swimming lessons with his dad.

“Sometimes they become quite independent teenagers, so maybe he’s ready for the bad boy phase. I hope he retains some of his quirky personality and I hope we can follow his adventures as he becomes part of the colony,” an excited Smale, keeper of the penguin sector since 2018, told CNN.

The king penguin is the second largest penguin species after the emperor penguin. It lives and breeds in Patagonia and the sub-Antarctic islands of the Earth.

The little king penguin is very different in appearance, with its long beak and dark brown plumage, to the mostly gray juvenile emperor, which has a black and white ‘mask’.

But once it changes its juvenile brown plumage, the young king penguin looks like the adult, just a little less colorful.