Penguins!

What could be cuter than a penguin? (3 minute preview, 6 minute read full article)

I can’t believe that I’ve made it this far in life without discovering Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin. But, thanks to a subscriber who recommended the work of First Dog on the Moon, I have now discovered her.

Here’s a cartoon of her explaining the right way to protest about climate change.

How to protest climate change nicely, with Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin | First Dog on the Moon | The Guardian

Brenda also gives me a fantastic excuse to talk about what I really wanted to talk about today – penguins. When I drafted this article, I didn’t plan to talk about any important science, I simply wanted to share an experience which brought me joy and which I was very lucky to have.

But I couldn’t ignore this morning’s news, about emperor penguins in the Bellingshausen Sea. Emperor penguins breed on sea ice which is connected to land. In the spring of 2022, the sea ice broke up before the chicks had lost their down feathers - crucially, this means they cannot swim. As a result, thousands of chicks died. The article documenting these events was published in the journal Nature, but there’s a good summary from The Guardian here.

It isn’t only humans who are under threat from climate change.

But the specific penguin I really want to talk about is the Adélie penguin, which is the only penguin I’ve seen in the wild. To make up for the fact that I’ve seen only one species, though, I have seen a lot of Adélie penguins. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, because the colony I visited is home to around 80,000 birds. However, I was there late in the season, when many birds had already left.

You’ll forgive me for not counting. Also, if you’re wondering about that pinkish brown colour - it’s penguin poo. The pink coloration comes from their diet, which is mostly krill. (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

Even though Adélies are an Antarctic penguin, there’s a good chance you are familiar with them. They’ve been featuring in New Zealand television commercials for potato chips for decades (here’s an example). They also played a supporting role in the animated movie Happy Feet. The main penguins in that film were Emperor penguins, but there’s a group of five Adélies known as the Amigos, who stare down a leopard seal who has been chasing Mumble.

The idea of a group of small pengiuns taking on a leopard seal to rescue an emperor chick might sound implausible, but it’s not as unlikely as it sounds. Adélies are feisty little birds, and they have been recorded rescuing emperor penguin chicks from skuas (a large seabird). Although skuas prey on Adélie eggs and chicks, to do so, they have to get around the adults, who are quite willing to take them on. The video I’ve linked to here is well-worth watching as an example.

Penguin chicks rescued by unlikely hero | Spy In The Snow | BBC Earth - YouTube

I saw Adélie penguins at the aptly-named Cape Bird (although it wasn’t named for its abundant penguins but after an explorer). Part of my visit to Scott Base involved seeing how field operations happened, so I spent a day visiting a number of sites on Ross Island by helicopter, including the Cape Bird field base. Right next to the base, there was a penguin colony. So, after a close look at the base and how it operated, I got to hang out with the penguins.

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