I count my visit to the Boulders Beach penguin colony in South Africa among the coolest in my life. I love penguins. You should too. In honor of World Penguin Day in April, it's time to learn some fantastic facts about formidable flightless birds.
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1
That Tuxedo Isn’t a Fashion Choice
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These birds may look dressed up for a black tie ball, but the penguin’s outfit is a practical one. Seen from the air, its black back blends in with the ocean. Seen from below, its white belly blends in with the bright sea surface.
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2
Bless You
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Penguins dine on seafood, which means they ingest lots of salt from the seawater. To deal with this, penguins have what’s called a supraorbital gland above the eye to filter salt from their bloodstream. They get rid of all this salt by sneezing it out. Gesundheit!
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3
Down in Africa
Andrew Moseman
Penguins aren’t limited to frozen expanses or Antarctic wastes. The African penguin (also called the jackass penguin for the braying sound it makes) lives around the coast of southern Africa, basking in the Southern Hemisphere sun.
The most famous group of African penguins lives at Boulders Beach, a place just down the Cape of Good Hope from Cape Town, South Africa. Here, tourists can see hundreds of penguins up close and even walk and swim among the birds. The Boulders colony started with two breeding pairs that moved here in 1982 and has grown into a beloved wildlife watching area.
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4
Living in the Forest
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The crested Fiordland penguin is another oddball. These birds live near the coast of the southern island of New Zealand and nest among the roots and rocks of the forest. Hunting reduced their population drastically, and now the species is listed as vulnerable to extinction.
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5
Going to the Galapagos
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Just one species of penguin naturally appears above the equator. That’s the Galapagos penguin, which is native to the island chain Charles Darwin made famous.
This bird is a little one, averaging just more than five pounds in weight. They live primarily around Fernandina Island in the western part of the archipelago, munching on fish and crustaceans.
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6
Ancient Mega-Penguins
SENCKENBERG RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Bones discovered in New Zealand reveal that a super-penguin swam there more than 55 million years ago. Kumimanu biceae, described in a 2017 study of the fossils, would have been about 5 feet, 9 inches long. That’s 50 percent larger than the emperor penguin, the largest living today, and about the size of an average human man.
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7
Fat Dudes Are More Desirable
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Male penguins take their turn sitting upon and incubating an egg. A fatter male is a better male in this case, because the pudgier dude can stay on the egg longer without needing to go to the sea for sustenance. Score one for dad bods everywhere
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8
The “Catastrophic Molt”
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A lot of birds lose their feathers slowly. Penguins do it all at once. Every year, penguins lose all their feathers over the course of a couple of weeks spent on land. It’s called a “catastrophic molt.”
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9
The Lost Colony
RACHAEL HERMAN, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY, STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY
A supercolony of 1.5 million Adélie penguins somehow escaped the notice of scientists until March 2018. That’s when satellite imagery spotted not penguins themselves, but their guano—and lots of it.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers looked for penguin poop that is the telltale sign of their presence to get a better handle on Antarctic penguin populations. When they saw a lot of it on the Danger Islands, they sent drones to investigate further. Turns out that the 3rd and 4th largest populations of Adélies lived here unbeknownst to science.
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10
Robot Penguins? Robot Penguins.
Le Maho et al//Getty Images
When scientists realized arm tags could harm king penguins, they tried something else—small RFID chips. But they needed an antenna to go amongst the penguins and read those signals. First they sent a plain old rover, and which didn’t annoy the penguins any more than another penguins would’ve. In a later experiment, researchers dressed up the bot as a penguin chick. This time, the king penguins let it roam free among them, hardly even seeming to notice it.
Andrew's from Nebraska. His work has also appeared in Discover, The Awl, Scientific American, Mental Floss, Playboy, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with two cats and a snake.