Chilean Textile Firm Turns Surgical Fabric Into Penguin Vests

Chile's major Humboldt Penguin breeding colonies dropped 63% over three years, according to researchers cited by The Associated Press — and a Chilean textile manufacturer has now built a product it says can help the surviving birds heal faster.

The threats stack up fast for the Humboldt Penguin, which lives on the Pacific coast of Chile and Peru. Warming waters, the flu, boat accidents, and fishing nets that can drown the birds have combined to catastrophic effect on the population.

The project began with Humboldt Conservation, a group that protects penguins, sea lions, and sea turtles in Chile's coastal Coquimbo region, 300 miles north of Santiago. According to the group, many of the penguins that enter its center arrive wounded on their chests or backs from attacks by other animals or boat accidents. Those wounds require cleaning and sometimes stitches — and animals, as any pet owner knows, rarely leave stitches alone.

Dogs and cats typically wear cones to protect a healing wound. The conservationists wanted another solution, so they approached Textil Kimba.

Kimba made children's textiles for garments like baby clothes and pajamas before pivoting in the 2010s to postoperative veterinary garments for cats and dogs. Its specialty textile, called BodyCobre in Chile, Latin America, and Italy, and Copperbody in the rest of the world, incorporates zinc and copper. Copper is an antimicrobial agent, meaning it can kill microorganisms like bacteria and viruses.

The company had already developed Copperbody into shirts, bodysuits, and other clothes for house pets recovering from surgery. Adapting the textile for penguins instead of four-legged animals required taking measurements, developing molds, then testing and adjusting the fit.

"What changes completely is the anatomy," says Carolina Momares, partner and production manager at Kimba. "We're used to working with dogs and cats, but a penguin has a very different body structure. Its wings, proportions, and the way it moves around make development a completely different challenge."

Kimba designed the penguin vests first and foremost as a physical barrier to stop the birds from removing or damaging their stitches. The company also engineered them for quick application and removal, cutting handling times and direct human contact with the animals.

That detail matters for the birds' long-term prospects.

"This is particularly important because we do not work with animals of permanent stay, but with wildlife that is temporarily under our care," says Tomás Pino Damke, president of Humboldt Conservation. Once recovered, the penguins must return to the wild while maintaining as little habituation as possible to human presence, he says.

The vest is no tuxedo, but it gives the bird a functional wardrobe that helps it heal while limiting human contact — a meaningful upgrade over the cone. For Kimba, the project demonstrates that a veterinary textile line built for pets can stretch into wildlife rehabilitation, a market the company had not previously served.