Penguins get their rocks off to woo
WADDLE WE DO NEXT TO SURVIVE ON EARTH?
FLIPPIN’ heck! After veg shortages, now we’re running out of penguins – and a lack of their poo is harming the planet, as we revealed yesterday. The iron in the birds’ droppings helps oceans absorb carbon dioxide but their population has dropped by 50% since the 1980s, due to climate change. Here KIM CARR reveals 15 things you never knew about penguins…
1 Their ultra-soft black and white feathers look as if they are wearing a tuxedo but this provides natural camouflage called countershading. Swimming on their back they blend into the darkness of the sea and their white tummies help them fit in with the bright surface of the ocean.
2 All their feathers drop off once a year for around three weeks, leaving them unable to swim or fish until they grow back their new coat.
3 In the lead-up to mating season, male penguins try to romance females by giving them rocks. The females then use the rocks to build a nest.
4 Breeds, including gentoos, rockhoppers and chinstraps, mate for life but a 2015 study of rockhoppers found the pairs only spent between 20 to 30 days together a year.
5 While the female provides the egg, it’s male Emperor penguins who do the incubation by tucking it into a warm pocket of skin and waiting for months until it hatches, not even moving to fish.
6 At Kent’s Wingham Wildlife park, two male Humboldt penguins called Kermit and Jumbs raised a chick, after its real father refused to keep it warm.
7 More than 50million years ago, penguins the same weight as a giant panda could be found in the sea and beaches across New Zealand. They were known as Kumimanu Fordycei.
8 Poo from Adelie and emperor penguins was spotted from space in 2018 when boffins were looking at satellite images from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2.
9 It’s often the word used to describe how they move around the ice but a group of penguins on land is also known as a wobble. In water, they are dubbed a raft.
10 Huddling together keeps penguins warm during freezing winters. But the canny birds move in rotation every 30 to 60 seconds to make sure those in the middle do not overheat. Arteries in their legs adjust blood flow once they pick up temperatures through their feet.
11 Thanks to their body being tapered at both ends, the streamlining helps penguins swim fast. They use their feet like rudders to control which direction they want to go in. 12 Oil is produced from their preen gland to insulate their bodies and covering feathers each day can take hours.
13 Last month, the world’s oldest Humboldt penguin – Rosie – died at the age of 32 at Sewerby Hall Zoo in Bridlington, East Yorks.
14 Thanks to their distinctive yellow feathers, macaroni penguins were named after the 18th century song Yankee Doodle first sung by Brit soldiers mocking Americans with lyrics: “Stuck a feather in his hat/And called it macaroni.”
15 Featured in the animated penguin movie Happy Feet, The Song Of The Heart was the last original track which singer Prince made before his death.