Penguins are native not just to Antarctica but to the Southern Ocean as a whole. The people Māori of New Zealand have long been familiar with them. Another interesting tidbit about them is that anatomically speaking, they're not flightless. Not airborne, but their motion in the water has more in common with flying than what we consider swimming. As Art Wolfe puts it in his book Penguins, Puffins, And Auks:
The fact that penguins fly through the water, and do not just paddle, is easily confirmed by a glance at their skeletal structure and musculature. Flying birds are the most specialized of all invertebrates [sic]. To provide support for the wings, their backbones have been fused into nearly rigid rods, to anchor the large muscles needed to move those wings, and to keep the center of gravity low in the body, their breastbones have been provided with an immense, jutting, blade-shape addition to the sternum known as the keel. Truly flightless birds such as the ostrich and the emu have lost their keels, or at best have only rudimentary ones. Penguins' keels are large and solid.
Penguins are, of course, very well adapted to where they live―while not exclusively Antarctic, they do favor cooler climates―and to how they live. Their grace in the water demonstrates that.
2 comments:
What a neat idea for a blog post. I remember the first DVD we ever got was David Atttenborough's Life on Earth and, although there were many amazing parts, it was seeing the segment about the emperor penguins of Antarctica that was the most astonishing. The males spend the long months of the southern winter huddled together holding their unhatched eggs on top of their feet. When springtime comes and the chicks hatch the females return and then the males can go off to fish.
The youtube video was pretty bad quality but gives an idea of just how nasty the conditions were for the penguins (and the photographers). Then I found a somewhat longer video that has more general information about their origins. They really do fly through the water. It was also interesting to learn that they live in the southern oceans where there are fewer natural predators - goodness knows life is hard enough.
That's a rather fascinating hatching ritual. When you live at the frozen end of the earth you have to get creative. Well, you do or evolution does. Even with us it can be hard to distinguish at times. David Attenborough is a tremendous narrator for these kinds of things. I guess coming from a theatrical family doesn't hurt.
They seem to have a pretty august history, their ancestors arriving in the area just after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Keeping in mind that "the area" might have included somewhat different land, since there's been some continental drift since the age of birds and mammals started. Puffins and auks do share much in common with them, despite not being close relatives. They're still able to fly, perhaps because there are more natural predators in the north.
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