Gioca STEMAnimals

Animals · Ice: the Arctic and Antarctica

Emperor penguin

Aptenodytes forsteri

The only bird nesting in deep winter

A male standing on the ice with the egg resting on his feet under a warm belly flap.
A male standing on the ice with the egg resting on his feet under a warm belly flap.
  • Status: Threatened
  • Coastal sea ice of Antarctica, between 66 and 78 degrees south latitude

Numbers

Weight
66 lbfrom 44 to 88 lb, averaging 55 lb after breeding
Length
43 infrom 43 to 51 in
Height
49 inmaximum value for an adult
Lifespan
20 yearssome individuals might reach 50 years
Depth
1755 ftmeasurement recorded for a female near McMurdo Sound
Breath-hold
20 minuteshunting dive
Male fasting
115 daysfrom the journey to the colony until hatching

Ten fun facts

  1. it is the only penguin species that breeds during the Antarctic winter, when the sun does not rise for months.

  2. with one hundred feathers per square inch, it has the densest plumage of any known bird on Earth.

  3. during deep dives, its heart rate slows to five beats per minute while nonessential organs reduce their activity.

  4. a female Emperor penguin was recorded diving to a depth of seventeen hundred feet near McMurdo Sound in Antarctica.

  5. its egg weighs sixteen ounces, which is only two percent of the mother's weight, making it proportionally tiny.

  6. the male incubates the egg for sixty-four straight days and has fasted for about one hundred fifteen days by hatching.

  7. inside the tight huddles formed during blizzards, the temperature can rise all the way to ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit.

  8. if the chick hatches before the mother returns, the father feeds it a protein-rich secretion from his own esophagus.

  9. only fifteen percent of breeding pairs stay together the following year because the female fertile window is very short.

  10. by lifting its flippers, it increases exposed surface area by sixteen percent to quickly release any excess body heat.

The quiz answers

The first one is the question printed in your book: here is the answer. The other four are extra.

Question 1 of 5★ this one is in your book

Which Emperor penguin incubates the egg?

Question 2 of 5

How long does incubation last?

Question 3 of 5

How deep can it dive?

Question 4 of 5

What is a penguin huddle?

Question 5 of 5

Why does the female leave the colony after laying the egg?

Try it yourself

Experiment 1

Hold your breath while counting the seconds and compare your time with the twenty minutes this bird stays underwater. How many times does your record fit?

Experiment 2

Hold a one-pound bag of flour in your hands. An Emperor penguin egg weighs almost the same amount, between sixteen and seventeen ounces.

Experiment 3

Mark sixty-four days in a row on a calendar. That is how long the male stands still incubating the egg without eating any food.

Data from Wikidata (Q161829) and Wikipedia (Emperor penguin).