♪♪ ♪♪ -This is Dot and she is just about three months old.

-And this is Lucas and he's about a month older than Dot.

-These guys were hand raised from day one.

We actually acquired these eggs from Minnesota Zoo as part of a breeding loan.

Once they got big enough and lost most of their baby down, at about six weeks old, we introduced them to a pool back in holding, where it was a safe place to swim.

And once we were confident in their swimming abilities, we introduced them to whatever members of the colony wanted to come into a back area and meet them.

♪♪ ♪♪ -These penguins are definitely spunkier than any of the penguins we've worked with.

We like to call them spirited.

They're very curious.

They want to know all of the people business that's going on, just as much as we want to know all the penguin business that's happening in the exhibit.

-We have a 200,000-gallon pool here.

It's all manufactured saltwater.

Water temperature is a brisk...

The reason the temperature is that low is because the penguins, in their natural habitat, live at the southern tip of South Africa, where most of the water that these guys swim in is much, much colder than what we have in the pool here.

-These birds are designed for this marine lifestyle.

They've got a nice layer of fat, as well as very dense feathers.

They have the most dense feathers of any bird species in the world, about average 60 feathers per square inch.

The way those feathers line and interlock actually prevents the water from penetrating through to their skin, so, they may look wet when they come out onto land, but they're actually dry underneath, so, they have their own personal dry suit.

The sharks that are in the water with them are leopard sharks.

Now, this species can be found here on our Pacific Coast, but they're very similar to a species of shark that they would naturally live with in the wild in South Africa and the sharks in here do not eat penguins.

They actually are competitors -- they eat the same thing as the penguins.

So, they are a bottom-dwelling shark with a small mouth, little teeth, and they enjoy eating fish, squid, and occasionally, they'll eat a fish the penguin drops, or vice versa, the penguin will eat a fish that the shark drops.

-We work with them every day and we appreciate their personalities and we just love them as an animal.

But their numbers in the wild are very, very threatened.

They estimate that there's only about 18,000 breeding pairs left.

So, the more people we can get to meet these birds and fall in love with them, the more people will care about preserving the habitat and doing what they can to help their wild counterparts.