On June 30, amid the turmoil that has been happening in Maharashtra politics, Nat Geo India decided to publish a poll about penguins. In a tweet, Nat Geo asked its followers, “Penguins can be massive too! Can you guess which species is the largest of them all?” Three options to it were Blue Penguin, Emperor Penguins and Adelie Penguins.
The poll amused netizens as Aaditya Thackeray, son of former Chief Minister of Maharashtra Uddhav Thackeray, is often called ‘baby penguin’ in social media jokes because of the expensive initiative under which Thackeray junior had brought penguins to Mumbai Zoo.
Twitter user Sagar sarcastically questioned, “But why penguins today?”
Twitter user Ankur said, “Mumbaiya penguin”.
Another Twitter user, Nationalist, said, “The timing of NatGeo talking about Penguins is world-class trolling for our own penguin.”
Twitter user Prashant said, “Timing dekh rhe hoo” (look at the timing).
Twitter user curiosweetie said, “Ok…the person behind this handle is sharp.”
Why is Aaditya called baby penguin?
Donald, Daisy, Popeye, Olive, Flipper, Bubble and Mr Molt are penguins owned by the Mumbai Zoo, thanks to the Cabinet Minister of Tourism and Environment for the Government of Maharashtra Aaditya Thackeray. All of them are Humboldt penguins that were bought from Seoul, South Korea, in July 2016. You can witness seven penguins having fun in their man-made habitat. These penguins, however, have been mired in controversy ever since, because of the huge costs involved to keep the birds in their preferred temperature conditions.
For the controversies penguins have caused in the past few years, many have started calling Aaditya Thackeray “Baby Penguin”. The hashtag makes its way to social media platforms every now and then. In 2020, a man named Sameet Thakkar was arrested for a complaint against him for calling Aaditya a baby penguin on social media. The controversy continued for months, and he was released from jail in November 2020.