I'm going to start today's episode by telling you about the weirdest conservation effort of all time,

or at least the weirdest one I've ever heard of. So today's animal, the fairy penguin,

is not an endangered species, but in some areas, some islands especially, they are getting killed off by a variety of

causes, then we will detail later in the show. On one particular island, their population

decrease has been rather dramatic. In the year 2000, there were at least 500 penguins on this

particular island. In 2005, there were at least 500 penguins on this particular island.

In 2005, there were less than 10.

And in this case, locals suspected that foxes were the main problem.

Foxes were introduced to the island by humans, and were killing the penguins.

And despite immense efforts, basically nothing was effective in ridding the island of foxes.

It seemed like the local fairy penguins were completely doomed.

And then, a guy going by the name of Swampy Marsh, first name Swampy, last name Marsh, a local chicken farmer, had a really strange idea.

He decided to train one of his sheep dogs, who was accustomed to guarding chickens, to guard the penguins instead.

And I swear this is a true story, it worked. Swampy Marsh said that his dog figured out pretty quickly that penguins are just chickens in dinner suits.

And now, the penguin is on its way to recovery on the island. They've got over a hundred

birds living there now. And if you're thinking, geez, they should make a kid's movie about this

story, they already have.

It's called Oddball.

I have not seen it.

But nevertheless, today we are going to talk about the subject of that movie.

Today we're going to talk about the smallest penguin on earth.

The Fairy Penguin.

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