I got to hug penguins at the zoo. My friend was their zookeeper and I was visitng her in the back room where the fish are kept, and she said, hey watch this, and opened the door to the exhibit, but didn’t take out any fish. So the penguins started peeking in to see what was going on and in a minute we had 20 penguins running around the fish kitchen! Then we had to catch them all and get them back into their pond, and so I guess that counts as hugging penguins. They are quite light – like all birds, and very firm to the touch. Slippery. I don’t think we hurt them – and we had to hang on pretty hard just to carry them a few feet!