Plump Penguins Prompt Concern

Japanese Zoo Has Them On Exercise Program

(CBS)  Penguins, as ornithologists and moviegoers know, are cool right now. Or should we say, hot? But as anybody in Hollywood also knows, stardom has its price: You have to look the part.

So, reports Mark Phillips, when the penguins at the Asahiyama Zoo in northern Japan start putting on weight in the winter from too much home-delivered sushi, the zookeepers had an answer: exercise.

Twice a day, the birds are taken out on a march, to try to keep them in shape.

The first march of the year, Phillips says, is always a popular photo opportunity at which, no doubt, penguin gossip and their next projects are hot topics.

It is, Phillips adds, "but a sad copy of the real annual 'March of the Penguins' now made famous in the surprise blockbuster movie."

The real star birds, he says, paraded for the cameras across Antarctica in order to mate and produce new stars.

That fame has, Phillips says kiddingly, put a lot of pressure on captive penguins worldwide. For some, the attention may even have gone to their heads.

There's no word yet whether these birds have now hired agents, shrinks and divorce lawyers.