A HUMBOLDT PENGUIN has managed to jailbreak his way out of a Tokyo aquarium and was last spotted swimming in a nearby river headed out to sea.

A nearby bird park snapped a photo of the 60cm-high runaway making a break for it and alerted the officials at the aquarium who had not yet noticed his disappearance.

Tokyo Sea Life Park has appealed to the public to help them track down the year-old jailbird penguin who is still at large and report any further sightings. A visitor subsequently took several shots of the penguin swimming away.

The whereabouts of the penguin are still unknown. Keepers at the park are at a loss to understand how the Madagascar movie style escape occurred.  The Japan Times reports that Takashi Sugino, an official at the Tokyo park said there was no way the bird could have gone over the 2 metre tall net that surrounds the aquarium but it may have found a gap in the penguin enclosure’s barrier fence and made a run for it.

The jailbreak incident has been engaging people on Twitter under the hashtags #penguin and #tokyo, with one (@thomaswmucha) encouraging the little fella, tweeting “Good Luck, little jailbird”.

The hunt is on to find the escapee, who is just one of 135 penguins at the aquarium, with officials hoping to bring him home soon.

In the meantime, does it remind anyone of this…?

(via DreamworksAnimation/Youtube)

Until they find the runaway why not check out these guys… (via Ustream.tv)