The book by Greg Stones, in video form. -via Everlasting Blort

You can see penguins in zoos all over the world, but to enjoy these birds in their natural habitat, you want to go to where they live. And you don’t have to go to Antarctica. Penguins thrive in twelve nations that are much easier to get to -as far north as Ecuador! Read about each of them and the penguins they have at The World Geography. Link -Thanks, Bosko!

I don’t know who took the picture of this adorable sign, but I found several references to the sign that identify it as being at the Maori Anglican Church at Raukokore, East Cape, New Zealand. -via Arbroath

Two weeks ago, there was a terrible oil spill off the coast of New Zealand. Skeinz, a yarn store in that country, responding by asking people to knit little sweaters for penguins who have been harmed by the oil. So many people around the world made them that Skeinz says that it has all of the sweaters that it can use!

Link -via The Uniblog | Photo: unknown

Mr Watson, 64, from Alsace said: ‘I was about to take a picture of the penguins when suddenly from the other side of the dune appeared a young elephant seal.

‘It stood for about six seconds just staring at us before going back down and disappearing.

‘A few seconds later he was standing again and he did this at least 15 times. The whole thing was very bizarre and lasted a good five minutes.

‘Soon everyone was trying to get the timing right to get good pictures of the seal rather than the penguins.’

See more pictures at the Daily Mail. Link -via Fark

(Image credit: Michel Watson/Caters News Agency

The aquarium set up a penguin group to care for the youngster around the clock. After a month of hand feeding the little penguin was much stronger and, to the delight of keepers, even grew feathers. It was then successfully re-introduced to its family group.

Follow the link to see what he looks like with feathers.

Link -via The Mary Sue | Photo: Quirky China News/Rex Features

Emperor penguins huddle together to keep warm over winter. They’ve developed their own system for making sure each penguin gets a chance to stand in the middle of the huddle and then rotate to the outside and give another a spot. The result resembles a crowd doing the wave! -via Buzzfeed

Officially, the 200,000 penguins are on the Salisbury Plain of South Georgia Island to mate. But still, that’s a lot of penguins. If they were ever to make a power grab, this would be the time.

Link via Kuriositas | Photo by Flickr user Liam Q used under Creative Commons license

Rockhopper Penguin (Image credit: Flickr user Marcus Borg)

For several hundred years, human activity on the Falkland Islands -roughly 300 miles of the Argentine coast- threatened its penguins’ survival. But the trend started to reverse in 1982, when Argentina and Britain began duking it out for control of the Falklands. Turns out, a war, a few landmines, and some unstable diplomatic relations might have been just enough to get the penguins back on track.

The Falkland Islands are small. Collectively, the 200-plus islands that make up the Falklands are only about as big as Connecticut. But through the years, they’ve managed to inspire some Texas-sized international contention. Ever since Argentina gained independence from Spain in 1816, it’s been vying for control of the Falklands in one form or another. Some Argentines even claims possession of the region today, even though Queen Elizabeth’s face graces every piece of currency, the Union Jack appears on the official flag, and every other government in the world recognizes British rule over the Falklands. Despire the fact that Argentina famously lost its military bid for control of the islands back in 1982, national polls still show 80 percent of Argentines want their government to take back the Islas Malvinas, as they’re known in the Spanish-speaking nation.

King Penguins (Image credit: Flickr user andym8y)

So what is it the Argentines so jealously covet? Hard to say. The Falkland Islands aren’t home to much, other than about 3,000 humans, 700,000 sheep, and a few fishing installations. What they do have, however, is an enormous population of penguins from five different species -the Southern Rockhoppers, the Magellanic, the King, the Gentoo, andthe Macaroni. Their names derive from, respectively, the ability to hop on rocks, a celebrated circumnavigator, a British ruler, a religious slur, and a slang reference to flashy dressers. With those five species combined, the Falklands are home to to a penguin army more than 1 million strong. That’s pretty impressive, but it’s believed the number was closer to 10 million only 300 years ago.

In the 18th century, the whale oil industry was booming, and the Falklands had their fair share of whales. Not coincidentally, the French, British, and Spanish groups began showing up on the islands to get in on the action. But whale oil isn’t exactly the easiest thing to produce. First, whales are brought ashore. Then their blubber is separated from their bodies, and the fat is rendered into oil in gigantic vats of boiling water. The Falkland Islands had plenty of whales, but they’re mostly void of timber, and burning whale oil to render whale oil seemed a little silly. So how did the settlers make their Falkland outposts survive? “Francoise, throw another penguin on the fire!” Yes, as it turned out, penguins made surprisingly good kindling, thanks to layers of protective (and, apparently, highly flammable) fat beneath their skin. And it didn’t hurt that they’re so easy to catch. Penguins are flightless and unafraid of humans, so anytime the rendering fires got low, whalers simply grabbed a penguin or two and tossed ‘em in.

Gentoo Penguins (Image credit: Flickr user andym8y)

ONE FISH, TWO FISH

Fortunately for the penguins, the whale oil business died out in the 1860s with the discovery of fossil fuels. That left the islands with little commercial industry, and the worst thing the penguins had to worry about for a while was the occasional egg theft. But peaceful human-penguin relations hit a roadblock again in 1982 when Argentina made its ill-fated attempt to reclaim the Falklands.

Although the British presence on the Falkland Islands has long been a sore spot for Argentina, no Argentine leader had ever tried to force a national claim to the land. At the time, however, the military government, led by General Leopoldo Galtieri, was in a unique situation. Already unpopular at home because of his habit of kidnapping and killing opposition leaders, Galtieri started to get truly nervous when the Argentine economy began to sink. Fearing outright rebellion, Galtieri tried to enlist the spirit of nationalism by invading the largely unprotected Falkland Islands on April 2. He quickly declared victory over the British, but his success was short-lived. Unfortunately for Galtieri, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher didn’t believe in capitulating to dictators, even regarding land as inconsequential and unprofitable as the Falklands. The United Kingdom quickly struck back. In the ensuing two-month conflict, more than 1,000 Argentine servicemen died, and Galtieri’s political downfall was solidified.

Magellanic Penguin (Image credit: Flickr user Bruno Furnari)

When the dust cleared, Britain’s rulers realized they’d just spent several million pounds to assert control over the Falklands, and it was probably in their best interest to find some way to prove that the expense had been worthwhile. Fishing seemed like the best way to make the Falklands economically self-sufficient, so the British government set up an exclusive fishing zone around the islands and began selling permits to everyone from local islanders to gigantic international fishing companies. It was a fine plan, except that the penguins relied on those same fish for survival. Before long, competing with humans for food had become a far greater threat to penguins than whaling had ever been. In a single decade, the Islands’ penguin population dropped from more than 6 million to fewer than 1 million.

THE SPOILS OF WAR

The Falkland Islands War, and the dwindling supply of fish that came with it, seriously threatened the local penguins. But, ironically enough, it also led to their gradual comeback. Since the dispute, Britain and Argentina have approached one another on diplomatic eggshells, if at all. As a result, neither side has been willing to risk angering the other by drilling for oil off the Falklands coast -even though experts estimate that 11 billion barrels worth of oil lie buried out there. That’s good news for all of penguinkind. In other parts of the world, even small amounts of oil leaked from drilling stations have proved disastrous for penguins. The flightless birds rely on a very specific balance of oils on their feathers in order to maintain perfect buoyancy. When mixed with crude oil, penguins will either sink and drown or float and starve. But as long as tensions remain high between the two nations, the Falkland penguins are in the clear.

The Falklands War also left the penguins with a bizarre kind of habitat protection.  During Argentina’s occupation of the islands, its military laid landmines along the beaches and pastureland near the capital city to deter the British from reclaiming the area. So far, those landmines haven’t killed anyone, but the well-marked and fenced-off explosive zones have made for prime penguin habitat. The penguins aren’t heavy enough to set off the mines, but because sheep and humans are, the little guys have to minefields all to themselves.

Macaroni Penguin (Image credit: Flickr user Terry Saunders)

Today there is still an estimated 25,000 landmines in the Falkland Islands. Over the years, they’ve come in pretty handy not only for protecting the penguin habitat from over-grazing, but also for keeping out overzealous tourists. Consequently, Falkland Islanders have decided that maybe having landmines is not such a bad thing. Even though the British government is obligated to remove them by 2009, the islanders recently put forth a proposal calling for their government to instead clean up the same number of mines in greater-risk areas such as Angola, Cambodia, or Afghanistan. After all, signs warning “Keep away from the penguins” will never be as effective as “Keep away from the penguins -or die.”

Ed. Note: Although the British began removing the landmines in a 2009-2010 pilot program, thousands still remain there today.

__________________________

The above article by Hank Green is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

The captain and all crew escaped the vessel, but by last Saturday the ship had begun to break up in the heavy surf. The oil slick had spread around the island and then out to sea in the direction of Inaccessible Island.

Our ship, the MV National Geographic Explorer arrived at Tristan Da Cunha yesterday and sailed to Nightingale Island this morning, as intended on our original itinerary with Lindblad Expeditions. Instead of mere bird watching, we were met with the disturbing sight of penguins and seals coated in sticky black oil.

Nightingale Island is home to some 20,000 of the endangered sub-species of Northern Rockhopper Penguin. Sadly, these are the birds that were hit the hardest—thousands are expected to die from the effects of the oil spill. While this spill is relatively minor in comparison to so many in the world today, it represents a major calamity for the fragile birdlife on pristine Nightingale Island and a heavy blow to the small group of islanders of nearby Tristan da Cunha.

Although hundreds of the rockhopper penguins were collected to be cleaned, many more hundreds are left covered with oil, along with seal pups and other wildlife. Read Evans’ report and see more pictures at National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Andrew Evans/National Geographic)

Three days ago, on a Southwest Airlines flight from San Francisco to San Diego, penguins waddled around the plane. SeaWorld was transporting them to a convention and the penguins’ attendants decided to give them some free time.

via Urlesque

A sea lion blocks the path that a penguin wishes to traverse. Does he go around the enormous beast? No. He walks right over the sea lion.

via The Presurfer

Carole Anne and Ron caught video of some penguins wandering about in the Falkland Islands. These two seem to have a small conundrum.

Penguin: Ooh, look, the ground is gone here!
Penguin: It’s water.
Penguin: But not deep enough to swim in.
Penguin: What will we ever do?
Penguin: I’ll have to think about that a bit.
Penguin: Look, maybe we could …walk through it!
Penguin: I don’t know, that doesn’t look right.
Penguin: Give it a try!
Penguin: I believe I will …jump!
Penguin: Now you’re just showing off.
Penguin: Well, your idea of walking through it may be for the best.
Penguin: Hey look! Mud! Whee!

-via Arbroath

Sacrilegious or just silly? Mark Oestreicher collected twenty of the strangest Christmas creches, many comprised of animal figurines depicting the birth of Jesus. This family of penguins struck me as particularly weird. Link -Thanks, Mark!

What will a flock of penguins do when a fake penguin comes around? The Japanese TV show Shimura Zoo finds out. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Wow, what a fun and exciting viral video trip this has been (a first for me)! As soon as I recorded the Philadelphia Zoo’s Humboldt penguins chasing a butterfly, I knew I had something special that would make some people smile. Little did I know that almost 1.6 million views later, I made a lot of people smile, which feels really good. Since I visit Neatorama daily, I knew where I had to send the link first. From there, it seems like the whole internet pays attention to what Neatorama posts! I sat staring at the YouTube video view counter going up and up, laughing with my wife as she jokingly dismissed it early on. Within a couple of days a CNN.com producer emailed me and asked me to upload it to my iReporter account- the next day it was among the featured “Editor’s Choice Top Picks” on their homepage for more than 2 days, and I quickly became a CNN iReporter “Superstar”. Who’s laughing now? (I was, feeling like the King of the World, getting my 15 minutes of fame.) I even got an email from the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) requesting permission to include it in a internet-video TV show (I think). They’ll send me a DVD of the episode after it airs- that should be fun.

Then my friends told me they saw it on Yahoo’s homepage too! Wow! But they ripped the video somehow into their own player and didn’t give me any credit. Boo! It was also ripped to numerous other video sites- so I learned that you can’t always keep your content as your own. I work for a big company, and my amateur video got more views than the professionally created ones which cost a LOT more money. For a couple of minutes I thought I had my next gig all lined up… but viral videos don’t last long.

So with all of this, the Philadelphia Zoo was of course pleased with the additional coverage/mentions of their zoo, so I asked if we could pay a return visit to see the penguins with my family and help with a feeding. Doesn’t hurt to ask, right? So we visited on Labor Day 2010 and had a lot of fun. Please forgive my video editing skills as they’re not great, but hopefully more penguin cuteness makes up for it!

(YouTube link)

Feeding penguins: checked off my bucket list.

I’d like to feed a shark someday…

Marty McGuire

Update: Thanks, Marty! Neatorama was mentioned in the followup report today on CNN’s iReport Blog.

South Korean fans are getting excited about their national team’s chances for winning the World Cup, so naturally they dressed penguins from a Seoul aquarium in team uniforms and put them on a model soccer field.

Link via Geekosystem

Engaged geeks Dale Larson and Laura La Gassa commissioned artist Yiying Lu to make their wedding invitations. Lu is best known as the creator of Fail Whale, once used extensively at Twitter. Since the wedding invitations are the opposite of fail, this design is called “Win Penguins.” Link -via Laughing Squid

Personally, I can’t think of anyway to celebrate my favorite birds in all their formal-wearing glory then to go into a little detail about the birds and their fascinating lives. While the holiday marks the migration period of Antarctic penguins, we at Neatorama don’t like to discriminate, so we’ll be talking about all penguins in general rather than focusing on just those from the very far south.

They’re Almost All Southerners

Almost every wild penguin lives somewhere in the southern hemisphere with the exception of the Galapagos Penguin, which lives in the area it is named for. While many people envision penguins living in frigid conditions, only a few actually live so far south and many live in rather temperate zones. For the most part, the larger penguins live in cooler areas and smaller ones live closer to the equator.

Rock Hopper Penguin image via Ben Tubby [Flickr]

Back In The Day

That’s not how it’s always been though. Prehistoric species of penguins were sprawled across the southern hemisphere with no distribution based on size. One giant penguin species lived only 1250 miles south of the equator. Prehistoric Penguins were so different in size that there was even a 6 foot tall penguin called the Nordenskjoeld’s Giant Penguin and a 173 pound species called the New Zealand Giant Penguin.

They’re Just Big Boned

These days though, the largest species of penguin is Emperor Penguin, which grows to around 3 and a half feet tall and 75 pounds. These are arguably the most famous penguins around as they are not only the largest, but some of the small handful of penguins that live in Antarctica. You may remember these guys as the stars of March of the Penguins.

The species is also unique for being the only penguin to breed in the middle of the harsh Antarctic winter at temperatures as low as -40 degrees. They are also the only penguins that leave the incubation duties to only one sex and one of only two species to lay only one egg at a time –most deliver two at a time. The females lay an egg and then the males incubate the egg on their feet while the females return to the sea over the next two months to feed. The males huddle in a large circle and rotate each individual’s time in the center.

When the eggs hatch, the males have normally fasted for over 115 days. When the mom’s return, the males leave the new-born chick with their partner and take their turn to go feed. When the chicks are strong enough, they huddle amongst themselves for warmth while the mothers and fathers feed and eventually they begin to grow their adult feathers and join the feeding process around the summer time.

While all penguin species have a somewhat high mortality rate amongst the young, Emperor Penguins have the highest rate of death during the chick’s first year. In fact, 90% of all of the chicks will die during this time.

Image via ianduffy [Flickr]

Don’t Count Out The Tinier Species

On the other side of the spectrum is the Little Blue Penguin (a.k.a. the Fairy Penguin), which grows only 16 inches tall and weighs a little over 2 pounds. These little ones are much less famous than their massive Emperor cousins, even so, you may recognize these little ones as the inspiration for the Linux logo –the creator of Linux was bitten by a Little Penguin while in Australia and the memory stayed with him through his life.

Because they are so small, they are not well adapted to frigid weather and they instead live in Australia and New Zealand and do better in areas free from cats and foxes. They have also been spotted in Chile and South Africa, but researchers aren’t sure if they are part of a colony or somehow ended up in the countries.

Little Blue Penguin image via CrazyCh3m [Flickr]. Linux image via Larry Ewing

They Stay Faithful…To Some Extent

Penguins tend to be monogamous each year, but they will often find a new mate each consecutive year. In species such as the Emperor Penguin, the lack of year-to-year monogamy (only a 15% rate) is believed to be due to environmental pressures that limit the amount of time they have to search for their past partners. Some of the penguins in warmer climates, like the Little Blue Penguin, do stay loyal to their partners until one of the mates dies.

Females are the ones who select their mating partner and in many cases, females will compete for an attractive male partner.

As for the eggs themselves, penguins have some o the smallest proportioned eggs of all birds when compared with the size of the parents. The Little Blue Penguin lays eggs that are only 4.7% of its weight and the Emperor Penguin’s eggs are only 2.3% of their total weight. The eggs also have some of the thickest shells, which weigh between 10-16% of the egg’s weight (it takes the Emperor Penguin chicks about 2-3 days to hatch out of their shells) and they have some of the largest yolk ratios of all birds –the yolk takes up 22-31% of the egg volume.

Image via Jerzy Strzelecki [Wikipedia]

They’ve Got Each Other’s Backs

Aside from mating, penguins have a very high level of social interaction and all penguins communicate through visual and vocal displays. Their vocal calls not only help the penguins choose mates, but also lets them find their mate and their nest when they come back from feeding. The penguin females often show a great level of empathy for one another; when one mother loses a chick, she will often attempt to take one from another’s nest, but many of the nearby females will usually help defend the mother.

Humans Also Have Their Backs

Penguins have a lot of human friends and all species are protected even though some species are at no risk of extinction in the near future. Perhaps part of the reason we connect with the birds, besides their inherent adorableness, is the fact that they are rarely afraid of humans.

Many species of penguins, particularly those from the Antarctic, have no fear of humans at all because they have so few predators on land. While seals attack by the water, the few air and land predators penguins sea will only eat chicks and eggs. For this reason, people who visit penguin habitats are often surprised to see the birds will often approach them out of pure curiosity.

This comes in handy in zoo and research facilities because the researchers can often get close to the birds without having to worry about throwing off the animal’s natural behavior patterns.

For one specific African penguin living at the California Academy of Sciences, this met an additional benefit when he started to go bald, which left him shivering in his tank. The keepers first tried to warm Pierre up with a heat lamp, but he still couldn’t enter the water, which is a major part of any penguins life (most species spend anywhere from 50-70% of their lives in the water). Eventually, one of the biologists, Pam Schaller, realized that if wet suits keep humans warm in frigid temperatures, it might just work for little Pierre. The modified suit worked brilliantly and Pierre was quite happy to have his life back as he frolicked with his 19 friends in the tank’s pool.

Image via Roux [Wikipedia]

They Love To Get Wet

The reason poor Pierre was so cold when he started losing his feathers comes down to a unique aspect of penguin anatomy. The birds aren’t kept warm with a layer of blubber (although the Emperor Penguins are benefited by being so large), but mostly by their waterproof feathers. The feathers trap air, which insulates their body and helps them to float.

While they can’t use their wings to fly, they instead work as flippers and penguins are great swimmers accordingly. Their style of swimming looks surprisingly like flight in other birds and they can reach speeds of 17 miles per hour, although most stay closer to 5 miles per hour during their swims. Most penguins do not swim very deeply and only dive for a minute or two, but the Emperor Penguin has been recorded going as deep as 1,800 feet for up to 22 minutes. No matter how deep they swim though, penguins have to return to the surface to breathe and most of the smaller species will leap in and out of the water like porpoises to breathe.

While underwater, penguins occasionally play, but they mostly swim to eat. Their main sources of food are krill, fish and squid. While it seems like their stark color contrasts would make them an easy target for underwater predators, since they largely stay near the top of the water surface, all the underwater predators (like orcas, seals, sea lions and sharks) can see is a white belly, which blends in with the water surface. From above, their dark backs help them blend in with the depths of the sea.

Penguin’s eyes are well adapted for seeing under water as, well as the rest of their bodies. In fact, a supraorbital gland allows them to filter excess salt from their blood stream and release it from their nasal passages.

In a way, it’s quite fortunate that penguins have so few predators in the land and air. When they cruise on the land, their wings and tails help them keep balance, but they waddle quite a bit. Many penguins will also toboggan along the snow to help them move quickly and with minimal energy.

Image via ken2754@Yokohama [Flickr]

Sources: Discovery, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Seaworld

In October, [Michelle Chipman] was walking down the hall when she kicked an inflatable penguin — which had been won at the Regatta — out of her way.  Seven-year-old Colby… promptly advised her that kicking penguins was prohibited.  He left the room for a minute, returned requesting Scotch Tape and then posted a hand-drawn sign — a woman kicking a penguin, in a circle with a diagonal line through it (as in a No Smoking sign).  Written around the image was the decree Colby had issued earlier — “No kicking penguins.”

The popularity of the sign and the message has resulted in the creation of t-shirts, proceeds from the sale of which are being used for the benefit of autism societies.

Link, via.

“New Zealand has the greatest diversity of penguin species and is arguably the best place in the world to see them. As well as being great fun, the Penguathlon gives people a fantastic chance to get up close with them as well as gaining a better understanding about their welfare”, said Gregg Anderson, Tourism New Zealand’s Regional Manager for UK and Europe.

The Penguathlon, which will run the rest of this month, may become an annual event. Link (with video) -via Arbroath

8. They’d make great punk rockers

(Photo credit: Jungleboy)

The whole post is funny and visually stunning. I highly recommend stopping by for a look.

Link