Is A Cotswold Penguin World's Oldest?

13 August 2013, 10:56 | Updated: 13 August 2013, 12:33

A female penguin who's blind in one eye and has a long term partner called Seth is at the centre of an international debate.

In May a Zoo in Denmark claimed they had the oldest penguin in the world - at age 34. But Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water are telling Heart they are pretty sure one of their females - Missy is 36.

Missy is the matriarch of England's only colony of king penguins. She arrived as an adult at the Birdland park back in 1982. Despite losing the sight in one eye, Missy is still very much a bird to be reckoned with and spends much of her time alongside Seth, her devoted penguin partner of 18 years. 

Birdland's Simon Blackwell said:

'The Danish zoo recently announced they believed that a Gentoo penguin there was the world's oldest living penguin having reached the age of 34 in May. 

'Although we cannot categorically age Missy we do know she was an adult when she came to Birdland and king penguins take five years to become fully mature. 

'Therefore she must be, at the very least, 36 years old and she could actually be significantly older. She has very much become one of the most loved birds here at the park and she's definitely top of the pecking order among the penguins.'

'The fact that she can only see out of one eye doesn't appear to have slowed her down at all and she uses one of her wings as a guide against the side of her enclosure to help her navigate her way around.'

According to the Guinness World Records the oldest penguin ever in captivity was Rocky, a rockhopper penguin who was one of six who arrived at Bergen Aquarium, Norway in 1974 and lived there until his death in October 2003, aged 29 years, four months. 

There are 17 species of penguin in the world and the king penguin is the second largest, weighing up to 18kg. The largest is the emperor penguin, which can weigh 45kg and the smallest is the appropriately-named little penguin which weighs two kilogrammes.