Video: Gentoo penguins at The Deep, Hull

Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael and a female called Fiona are already making a stir.

A picture posted on Facebook had 100,000 hits in less than 24 hours and the city’s Deep aquarium is predicting a 10,000 uplift in visitors.

As the first horde of excited children gathered in front of the impressive display themed on an old whaling port in South Georgia in the South Atlantic, the birds proved born entertainers, gliding effortlessly through the water, torpedoing upwards and popping out on the ice.

One of them seemed to like bursting bubbles with his beak. And when the fake snow – a foam tested by toxicologists at Hull University – started to fall, they all shuffled underneath, as in a shower, seemingly basking in its feel.

The staff admit is much easier to bond with a penguin than a shark and are besotted with their new charges.

The five birds will be shortly joined by four juveniles and an adult. Like their predecessors they will make the journey in a crate which is lit – penguins do not like the dark – from the Texas zoo where they were bred in captivity.

The future will see the younger birds bred with European individuals. They do not pair for life as suggested in rose-tinted Hollywood movies – and pairs of males can often prove better parents.

Katy Duke, senior aquarist, hopes people take away messages about the environment from their visit: “If everybody takes away one little thing, turning their mobile charger off, not wasting electricity, these little penguins will have done a massive amount of good.”