Penguins take selfie after finding camera

SYDNEY — Two emperor penguins in Antarctica captured a short video of themselves after coming across a camera left on the ice by a human, according to a report in The Washington Post yesterday. The Australian Antarctic Division posted the comical, 38-second clip to its social media channels on Thursday. One of the group’s members, Eddie Gault, had placed the camera on the ground near the Auster Rookery — home to a large emperor penguin colony — while visiting the nearby Mawson research station.

“It didn’t take long for the naturally curious birds to seize the opportunity for a selfie,” the group said.

While the video at first captures a handful of penguins from a low vantage point, one bird soon waddles over to the camera and — with a single impressive kick — angles the screen to focus only on its face.

Because everyone has that one friend, another penguin soon nudges its way into the frame. For about half a minute, the two chirp and cock their heads inquisitively at the screen, before perking up and shaking their heads and bellies repeatedly.

Within hours, video of the penguins had been viewed more than 30,000 times on the Australian Antarctic Division Facebook page.

It’s not the first time, of course, that an animal selfie has made headlines, The

Post reported. In 2011, a male-crested black macaque named Naruto took a “monkey selfie,” using a camera belonging to wildlife photographer (and human) David Slater.

At the time, Slater had been touring the Tangkoko-Batuangus Nature Reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi to photograph a troupe of macaques. On the second day, a group of monkeys began playing with his camera, so he mounted it on a tripod and adjusted the settings to optimize a close-up in case they hit the trigger, The Post added.

The ensuing “monkey selfies” quickly went viral and were featured in a 2014 photography book by Slater called