Welcome to Madagascar

At the Central Park Zoo, Marty the zebra is celebrating his tenth birthday, but has grown bored with his daily routine and longs to experience the wild. Marty's best friend is Alex the lion, who enjoys showing off for the public and his celebrity status as "the king of New York". Alex attempts to cheer Marty up, but Marty, still unsatisfied, gets some tips from the zoo's penguins—Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private—who are trying to escape the zoo, and follows them out. Alex, Melman the giraffe, and Gloria the hippo pursue Marty in an attempt to convince him to return. The four, along with the penguins and two chimpanzees named Mason and Phil, find themselves at Grand Central Station, where they are quickly sedated via a tranquilizer gun when Alex's attempt to communicate with humans is mistaken for aggression. The zoo, under pressure from anti-captivity activists, is forced to ship the escaped animals by sea to a Kenyan wildlife preserve. During their travels, the penguins escape from their enclosure and take over the ship, intent on taking it to Antarctica. Their antics on the bridge cause the crates containing Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria to fall overboard and wash ashore on Madagascar.