Species profile
Spheniscus demersus
African penguin
CR · Critically Endangered — Critically Endangered — extreme risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Critically Endangered. The African penguin brays like a donkey — which is why sailors nicknamed it the jackass penguin — and each bird's bray is unique to its partner. Its recorded population direction is decreasing, so the category needs to be read alongside continuing losses of individuals or local populations.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with marine, coastal, island. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. Its population has crashed by around 95% since 1900, largely because industrial fishing removed the sardines and anchovies it depends on. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
The black spots on an African penguin's chest are as individual as fingerprints — researchers use them to identify birds in the field. The catalogue records 3 principal pressures for this profile: Overfishing, Oil spills, Guano loss. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Fishery management needs enforceable limits, more selective gear, bycatch reduction and coordinated compliance across jurisdictions. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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Listen to this species
Boulders Beach, Simon's Town, Western Cape · 0:05 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/