The Galapagos Penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus) is a penguin

Penguin

Penguins are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers...

 endemic to the Galapagos Islands

Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part.The Galápagos Islands and its surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a...

. It is the only penguin that lives north of the equator

Equator

An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....

 in the wild; it can survive due to the cool temperatures resulting from the Humboldt Current

Humboldt Current

The Humboldt Current , also known as the Peru Current, is a cold, low-salinity ocean current that flows north-westward along the west coast of South America from the southern tip of Chile to northern Peru. It is an eastern boundary current flowing in the direction of the equator, and can extend...

 and cool waters from great depths brought up by the Cromwell Current

Cromwell current

The Cromwell Current is an eastward-flowing subsurface current that extends the length of the equator in the Pacific Ocean....

. The Galapagos Penguin is one of the banded penguins, the other species of which occur mostly on the coasts of mainland South America, and Africa.
The average Galapagos Penguin is 49 centimetres (19.3 in) long and 2.5 kilogram in weight.