With compact, streamlined bodies, penguins can swim an average of 2. They also "toboggan," laying on their belly and pushing themselves along the ice with their flippers and feet. Most penguin species spend several hours a day preening and waterproofing their feathers with an oil produced from a gland located above their tail feathers. Feathers are important to keep penguins warm and to keep cold water from touching their skin. Most penguin species gather in colonies in areas free from land predators during nesting.
Many penguins build a nest of rocks, sticks or grass where one or two eggs are laid. Because penguins only eat in the ocean, they must fast while mating, incubating eggs and guarding chicks. The male and female usually take turns tending to the eggs and raising the chicks while the other mate returns to the ocean to eat.
Once the chick has adult feathers, it is ready to swim and hunt on its own. Penguins are superbly adapted to an aquatic life. Their wings have become flippers, useless for flight in the air.
In the water, however, penguins are astonishingly agile. Within the smooth plumage a layer of air is preserved, ensuring buoyancy. The air layer also helps insulate the birds in cold waters. Their main predators are other marine animals, such as leopard seals and killer whales.
Skuas and sheathbills also eat penguin eggs and chicks. Penguins are only found in the Southern Hemisphere. The greatest concentrations are on Antarctic coasts and sub-Antarctic islands. There are 18 species of penguins, 5 of which live in Antarctica. Another 4 species live on sub-Antarctic islands.
This forces many penguins to compete for food, and puts them in danger of getting accidentally captured by fishing nets. Among the biggest threats to penguin populations is climate change. Warming in the polar regions has melted sea ice, which penguins depend on to find food and build nests. Rapidly changing conditions mean Antarctica could lose most of its penguins to climate change by the end of the century. To survive, they may have to relocate to new habitats.
All rights reserved. A pair of gentoo penguins Pygoscelis papua. Common Name: Penguins. Scientific Name: Spheniscidae. Diet: Carnivore. Group Name: Colony. Average Life Span: years. Size: inches. Weight: pounds. Penguins are very nearly exclusive to the southern hemisphere, but Galapagos penguins live right on the equator and so there are a few penguins living in the northern hemisphere. The name penguin was originally given to an unrelated bird species — the now-extinct great auk, which was a large, flightless, black and white bird.
When explorers first encountered wild penguins, they used the same name for the new creatures they were seeing. Yes, penguins are birds, although they are flightless birds. Penguins eat a variety of seafood such as fish, squid and crustaceans. The smaller penguins usually feed on krill. Climate change is likely to affect the numbers of krill, and thus affect the penguins as well.
Since the s, krill density in some areas has decreased by 80 per cent. Penguins have feathers just like all other birds. Penguin feathers are shorter and stiffer than most bird feathers, which makes penguins more streamlined in the water and traps more air to provide better insulation.
That makes walking more difficult, and the classic penguin waddle is the result. The total population of king penguins is about 2.
Their population is increasing too, and due to their extremely large range and numbers the IUCN lists them as of Least Concern in terms of extinction risk. King penguins form vast breeding colonies, for example a colony on South Georgia Island holds over , breeding pairs. Read more about king penguins. The emperor penguin is the only species that spends the harsh Antarctic winter on land — the males protect their eggs from the cold ice by keeping them on their feet.
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