Forget Happy Feet - these criminal penguins have Sticky Hands ... er, make that Sticky Beaks:

A "criminal" stone-stealing Adelie penguin has been captured on camera by a BBC film crew.

The team, filming for the documentary Frozen Planet, spent four months with the penguin colony on Ross Island, Antarctica.

The footage they captured shows a male penguin stealing stones from its neighbour's nest.

The birds build their stone nests to elevate and protect their eggs from run-off when the Antarctic ice melts.

Males with the best nests are more likely to attract a mate, so, in a colony of half a million penguins, the best stones are highly prized.

Link

Conservation experts say the penguin is about 10 months old and stands about 80 centimetres high. Colin Miskelly, a curator at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand, said the bird was likely born during the last Antarctic winter. It may have been searching for squid and krill when it took a wrong turn.

Miskelly said emperor penguins can spend months at a time in the ocean, coming ashore only to molt or rest. He doesn’t know what might have caused this particular one to become disoriented.

Miskelly said the penguin appeared healthy and well-fed, with plenty of body fat, and probably came ashore for a rest.

However, Miskelly said the penguin would need to find its way back south soon if it were to survive. Despite the onset of

the New Zealand winter, the bird was probably hot and thirsty, he said, and it had been eating wet sand. “It doesn’t

realize that the sand isn’t going to melt inside it,” Miskelly said. “They typically eat snow, because it’s their only liquid.”

However, he said the bird was in no immediate danger from dehydration because Emperor penguins can also drink salt water in the summer.

Peter Simpson, a program manager for New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, said officials are asking people to stand back about 10 metres from the creature and to avoid letting dogs near it.

Other than that, he said, officials plan to let nature take its course. Simpson said the bird could live several weeks before needing another meal.

Link | Image: Richard Gill, Department of Conservation/Associated Press

A macaroni penguin chick is being trained to recognize a black rubber glove as its mother. The egg was abandoned after one of the parents became ill; because it takes two to incubate a penguin egg, it was left unattended until keepers at Living Coasts in Torquay, Devon, decided to raise it themselves. So, naturally, they fashioned a mother penguin out of a glove, some red paint and yellow cord.

In order to hand rear the chick, keepers are wearing a home-made penguin glove puppet during its feeds to stop it from becoming used to humans.

The puppet is made from a black rubber industrial glove decorated with red eyes and yellow plumes to mimic an adult macaroni penguin.

Exhibit manager Clare Rugg said: ”This way contact is kept to a minimum – yes, the chick will hear and see keepers, but it will also see the glove which has the shape and colour of an adult penguin.”

Senior keeper Lois Rowell said: ”We don’t mind the chick becoming familiar with us so long as it knows it’s a macaroni penguin and recognises what one looks like, hence the glove.”

The chick is fed through a syringe by a handler wearing the glove, and a recording of macaroni penguins plays to familiarize the chick with others in its group.

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Japan has at least two stationmaster dogs, with the latest being a shaggy off-white Akita named Wasao. Already somewhat of an animal celebrity in Japan for his “busa-kawa” (ugly-cute) characteristics, Wasao was the ideal choice to be Tourism Stationmaster of Ajigasawa station in far-northern Aomori prefecture. Get that? TOURISM Stationmaster… they aren’t big on subtlety up in Aomori.

Read about all of them at WebEcoist. Link -via Fark

Cute little Cookie is a penguin of the species known as Little Penguin {wiki}. He is the mascot of the Zoo Bird House at the Cincinnati Zoo. On a related note, I looked up “bumblefoot” and found out where they got the name for the penguin in the movie Happy Feet. -via Ever So Strange

"Feather-loss disorders are uncommon in most bird species, and we need to conduct further study to determine the cause of the disorder and if this is in fact spreading to other penguin species," said report author P. Dee Boersma of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

Boersma has been studying Magellanic penguins for more than three decades and says the feather-loss disorder first emerged in Cape Town, South Africa in 2006 among a group of African (or black-footed) penguins. During that year, approximately 59 percent of the penguin chicks lost their feathers, followed by 97 percent of the chicks in 2007, and 20 percent of the chicks in 2008. [...]

The researchers say pathogens, thyroid disorders, nutrient imbalances or genetics could be to blame. "We need to learn how to stop the spread of feather-loss disorder, as penguins already have problems with oil pollution and climate variation," concluded Boersma. "It’s important to keep disease from being added to the list of threats they face."

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As this emperor penguin chick matures to adulthood, his “bib” took the shape we are all familiar with. Wildlife photographer Sue Flood said this chick is the only one she’s ever seen with such markings. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Sue Flood)

While some complain about the snow, this little guy dances for joy! Or maybe he just really likes the song “Auld Lang Syne.” It’s a Happy Feet New Year! -Thanks, özi!

In this game, you rearranging scenes to help a sleepwalking penguin make his way home safely. It gets pretty goofy at times. Link -via Monkeyfilter

Tungo the penguin was found on a beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil unable to eat because his beak had been shattered, probably by a boat propeller. Veterinarians at the local zoo made him a new acrylic beak, fashioned in the shape of the broken pieces of his old beak. Tungo is recovering nicely and is able to eat. Link (with video) -via Arbroath

Your cute video of the day comes from the Philadelphia Zoo, via Neatoramanaut
Marty McGuire. Here’s his YouTube clip of several Humboldt penguins havinga bit of fun chasing a butterfly.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Marty!

National Geographic Traveler contributing editor Andrew Evans (@Bus2Antarctica) snapped this photo of a rare black penguin during his travels around the world to Antarctica.

He wrote that it’s a "rare melanistic trait that’s practically undocumented" on king penguins – Thanks Marilyn!

National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen is one lucky man. Not only did he get to swim and take photos of a 12-foot leopard seal in the Antarctic (and didn’t get eaten), he was actually "adopted" by it!

I slipped into the water, terrified of what might happen, and I swam up to this leopard seal. My legs were shaking and I had dry mouth. Right away she dropped the penguin. She came up to me and she opened her mouth … and her head is twice as wide as a grizzly bear’s head. She’s huge. She took my whole head and my camera inside her head and did this threat display.

But then the most remarkable thing happen. She went off and got me a live penguin. She came up and she started to feed me a penguin. She kept letting these live penguins go and the penguin would shoot past me and she’d look disgusted as she go by me. She did this over and over.

And then I think she realized that I was this useless predator in her ocean, probably going to starve to death and I think she became quite panicked and she got me weak penguins then dead penguins …

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

Harry and Pepper are a pair of adorable male Magellan penguins at the San Francisco Zoo. They have been together for the last 6 years and even adopted an egg together in 2008. All was going well in their relationship until a newly widowed female penguin entered the picture and poor old Pepper was left out in the cold.

Last year, the pair was allowed to incubate and hatch an egg another penguin had laid. “Of all of the parents that year, they were the best,” Brown said. “They took very good care of their chick. He ended up being the largest chick on the island.” One could say that all seemed to be going swimmingly with Harry and Pepper.

Enter the recently widowed Linda, who has long had a reputation of sorts, according to Brown.

Several years ago, she left her longtime companion and moved in with much older Fig just hours after Fig’s partner passed away, Brown said. “That was the fastest we’d ever seen penguins move on,” he said. “To be completely anthropomorphizing, Linda seems conniving. She’s got her plan. I don’t think she was wanting to be a single girl for too long.”

This year, within weeks of Fig passing away in winter, Harry was seen in Fig’s old burrow spending time with Linda, Brown said. Then one day, Harry and Linda approached Pepper’s pen and confronted Pepper. Harry began attacking Pepper violently and the three ultimately had to be separated, Brown said.

Link

(Photo: Cindy Chew / The Examiner)

Students at the University of Quebec won a competition of human-powered submarines by basing their design on the body and movement of a penguin:

Team OMER, composed of students from the school’s Ecole de Technologie Superieure in Montreal, drove two propellerless submarines to victory (winning $1,000 per race in the process) using thrust delivered from a pair of carbon fiber oars resembling the wings of the tuxedoed bird.

OMER 6, a one-person submarine, achieved a speed of 4.916 knots (5.65 miles per hour), beating the previous 4.642-knot (5.34-mile-per-hour) speed record for subs without a propeller. The two-person OMER 7 sub hit a top speed of 5.133 knots (5.90 miles per hour).

Link

“We can’t see actual penguins on the satellite maps because the resolution isn’t good enough,” said mapping expert Peter Fretwell. “But during the breeding season the birds stay at a colony for eight months. The ice gets pretty dirty and it’s the guano stains that we can see.”

The method helped scientists identify 38 penguin colonies — of those, 10 were new. Of previously known colonies, six had re-located and six were not found.

Link -via Simply Left Behind

(image credit: Flickr user Carles-FlashOnTheBlog)

Previously at Neatorama: Penguin Poop.

Festo, has been shown here on Neatorama several times in the past and each time their robotics and bizarre creations blew our collective minds…our Neatorama Hivemind to be exact…but that’s a story for another time.

In this video you’ll get to see creepy blue LED robotic penguins swimming about in a large pool. Also, you’ll see it’s more lighter cousin who probably is the envy of every penguin in being able to fly/float and much more in terms of various robotic creations. Really fascinating stuff!

More info here – Link

For older Neatorama Festo links:

Festo’s Upside-Down Hot Air Balloon
AquaJelly and AirJelly
Air Ray: The Blimp With Wings
Meet Aqua Ray
Festo Airic’s Robotic Arm
Floating Fish Blimp

Remember the gay penguins that got ejected from their colony because they were trying to steal eggs from other penguins? Well, the zookeepers gave the couple two eggs laid by an inexperienced penguin mom … and it turns out they became the best parents in the zoo!

‘We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they’ve turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,’ said one of the keepers.

‘It’s very encouraging and if this works out well we will try to arrange for them to become real parents themselves with artificial insemination.’

Wildlife experts at the park explain that despite being gay the three-year-old male birds are still driven by an urge to be fathers.

‘One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite the fact that they can’t have eggs naturally, it does not take away their biological drive to be a parent,’ said one.

Link

Keepers have segregated the couple after they caught them trying to trick straight birds into parting with their offspring by placing round stones at their feet and then running off with an egg.

Experts at the Polarland Park in Harbin, north east China, say that despite being gay the three year old male birds are still driven by an urge to be dads.

Link

Previously on Neatorama: Gay Penguins Say No Thanks to Females