This antimicrobial penguin vest isn’t just precious. It could be lifesaving

FastCompany: The Humboldt Penguin, which lives on the Pacific coast of Chile and Peru, faces a lot of challenges , including warming waters, the flu, boat accidents, and fishing nets that can drown them. Those hazards have had a catastrophic effect on the population. Researchers found major breeding colonies for the bird in Chile dropped 63% over three years, according to The Associated Press . It’s a perilous time to be a Humboldt Penguin, but a Chilean textile manufacturer is doing its part to help save the penguins by adapting one of its postoperative textiles that the company says can help them heal faster.

[Photo: ©ONG Conservación Humboldt] The project began with Humboldt Conservation, a conservation group that protects penguins, sea lions, and sea turtles in Chile’s coastal Coquimbo region, 300 miles north of Santiago, the capital. The group says that many of the penguins that enter its center are wounded on their chests or back from things like attacks from other animals or boat accidents. These wounds require cleaning and sometimes stitches, which animals can never seem to leave alone.

Dogs and cats often wear cones to protect a healing wound, but the conservationists wondered if there was another solution, so they reached out to Textil Kimba, a textile company that used to make children’s textiles for garments like baby clothes and pajamas before pivoting in the 2010s to postoperative veterinary garments for cats and dogs. [Photo: ©ONG Conservación Humboldt] The speciality textile it developed, called BodyCobre in Chile, Latin America, and Italy, and Copperbody in the rest of the world, incorporates zinc and copper. The latter is an antimicrobial agent , meaning it can kill microorganisms like bacteria and viruses.

The company developed Copperbody into shirts, bodysuits, and other clothes for house pets who had had surgery. To adapt the textile for penguins instead of four-legged animals required taking measurements and 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.” [Image: ©ONG Conservación Humboldt] Kimba’s penguin vests were designed first and foremost to be a physical barrier to prevent the birds from removing or damaging their stitches. But they were also made to be to put on and take off to reduce handling times and direct human contact with the animal. “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, these penguins have to return to the wild while maintaining as little habituation as possible to human presence, he says. It’s no tuxedo, but Kimba’s penguin vest gives the bird a stylish wardrobe that helps it heal while reducing human contact.

The article discusses a unique product innovation that combines conservation with brand strategy, making it significant for the industry while also providing actionable insights for brand professionals.