96 Fun Facts About Penguins

On average, an adult emperor penguin stands about how tall?

An adult emperor penguin stands about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall and weighs roughly 22–45 kg, making it the tallest and heaviest living penguin species.

Penguins were named by European explorers after which unrelated, now-extinct Northern Hemisphere seabird?

The word first appears in the late 16th century as a synonym for the great auk, whose genus is still Pinguinus. Its resemblance to penguins is convergent evolution.

What do penguins primarily eat?

Penguins eat fish, krill, and squid, swallowing prey whole while swimming; a backward-pointing spiny tongue and palate stop slippery catches from escaping.

A group of penguins swimming together at sea is sometimes called what?

A raft is the name at sea; on land the same birds form a colony, or a rookery when nesting, and rockhoppers typically leave and return from foraging trips in groups.

Which 2006 animated film features penguins who love to dance?

Happy Feet (2006) tells the story of Mumble, an Emperor Penguin who can tap dance rather than sing like other penguins.

What color are most penguins?

Most penguins are black and white: the dark back hides them against deep water from above, and the white belly hides them against the bright surface from below.

Which penguin species is the smallest?

The Little Blue Penguin (also called the Little Penguin or Fairy Penguin) is the smallest species, standing only about 33 cm (13 inches) tall.

Where is the only place in the Northern Hemisphere where penguins are found in the wild?

The Galápagos Islands host the only penguin species living at and slightly north of the equator, kept comfortable by cold upwelling around the western islands; it is one of the rarest penguins.

Emperor penguin chicks are covered in down of what colour?

Emperor penguin chicks wear silver-grey down with a black head and white face mask. King penguin chicks, by contrast, wear dark-brown down and were once mistaken for a separate 'woolly penguin' species.

How do Emperor Penguin fathers keep their eggs warm?

The father holds it there for 65 to 75 days without eating, then keeps the newly hatched chick on his feet in the 'guard phase' until the mother returns from the sea.

What is the term for a penguin's black-and-white coloring that provides camouflage in water?

Countershading: seen from above the dark back merges with deep water, and from below the white belly merges with the bright surface. Sharks and many fish use the same trick.

Approximately how many species of penguins exist today?

About 18 penguin species are recognised; counts run from 17 to 20 depending on whether the rockhoppers and the white-flippered penguin are split off as separate species.

Which 2005 documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman follows emperors through a breeding cycle?

March of the Penguins (2005), the English version of La Marche de l'empereur, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; Morgan Freeman also narrated the 2018 sequel.

Which species is the fastest underwater swimmer of the family, clocked at 36 km/h?

That turn of speed is why the Gentoo Linux operating system, which aims at high performance, borrowed the name.

Which penguin species was found to microsleep over 10,000 times a day?

Chinstrap penguins nesting on King George Island were recorded taking more than 10,000 microsleeps a day, each about four seconds long, in a 2023 study; they are also among the most aggressive penguins.

What lets penguins drink seawater without harm?

The supraorbital gland concentrates the salt into a brine that drips or is shaken from the nostrils, which is why penguins seem to sneeze so often.

Which species builds rough nests out of small stones, which males present as courtship gifts?

Pebbles are currency in an Adélie colony: males present them during courtship and steal them from neighbours' nests whenever backs are turned.

How long can Emperor Penguins hold their breath underwater?

Emperor penguins can hold their breath for about 20 minutes, the longest of any bird; their haemoglobin keeps working at blood-oxygen levels that would knock out a human.

Which species has a bright yellow crest sweeping back from the centre of its forehead?

The name comes from 18th-century English 'macaroni' dandies with their flamboyant style; the species name chrysolophus means 'golden crest'. Females routinely tip out their smaller first egg.

What is the primary predator of penguins in the water?

Leopard seals cut chinstrap populations by an estimated 5 to 20 percent a year. Orcas take penguins too, but polar bears never meet one outside a cartoon.

Why do penguins never encounter polar bears in the wild?

Penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere and polar bears only in the Arctic, so they live in opposite hemispheres and never meet. With no land predators in the Antarctic, penguins could afford to give up flight.

Which country has African Penguins as a native species?

African penguins are native to South Africa and Namibia, breeding on about two dozen islands plus a famous mainland colony at Boulders Beach near Cape Town; the 2000 sinking of the MV Treasure oiled tens of thousands.

An emperor penguin typically lives about how long in the wild?

Emperor penguins typically live about 20 years in the wild, though a few may reach 50. The oldest penguin on record was probably Rocky, a rockhopper at Bergen Aquarium in Norway, who lived to 29 years and 4 months.

Which stop-motion children's TV character, a clay penguin first produced in Switzerland, speaks an invented 'Penguinese'?

Pingu's creator Otmar Gutmann had pitched clay sea lions before Erika Brueggemann picked his penguins; David Hasselhoff released a 'Pingu Dance' rap in 1993.

Which crested penguin breeds only on New Zealand's Bounty and Antipodes Islands?

The erect-crested penguin nests only on the subantarctic Bounty and Antipodes Islands southeast of New Zealand; unlike other crested penguins it can raise its stiff yellow crest feathers upright.

How do penguins stay warm in freezing Antarctic temperatures?

Muscles hold the feathers erect on land to trap a layer of air against the skin, and the fat can be 3 cm thick before breeding. Emperors also huddle against 200 km/h winds.

What is the term for penguins shedding all their feathers at once each year?

Penguins undergo a catastrophic moult, replacing every feather over two to three weeks each year; they cannot swim until it is done, so they fast on land the whole time.

In which Jim Carrey film does a man inherit six penguins?

Carrey plays Tom Popper; the 2011 film loosely adapts the 1938 children's book.

Linus Torvalds says a penguin bit him in 1993 at a zoo in which Australian city?

Torvalds tells of being nipped by a fairy penguin at Canberra's National Zoo and Aquarium during a 1993 visit to Australia; Larry Ewing later drew the resulting mascot in an early version of GIMP.

How long does a male Emperor Penguin fast while incubating his egg?

He goes about 65 days (2 months) without eating, shedding up to 45% of his body weight before the female returns with food.

Which seabirds are the penguins' closest living relatives?

Penguins' closest living relatives are the albatrosses and petrels; DNA studies place the two seabird groups as sister lineages, while the look-alike auks of the north are only convergent.

How deep has an Emperor Penguin been recorded diving?

Emperor penguins have been recorded diving over 500 meters: the deepest logged dive reached 564 m, far beyond any other bird. Dense bones help them sink and resist the pressure.

The compact winter huddle formed by emperor penguins is also known by what name?

The huddle is also called the turtle formation: birds lean forward on their neighbours and take turns in the warm centre as winter winds reach 200 km/h.

What nickname does the African penguin carry because of its loud call?

The African penguin is nicknamed the jackass penguin for its donkey-like braying; its Magellanic cousins in South America bray the same way. It is also called the black-footed or Cape penguin.

What is the name for emperor penguins sliding across ice on their bellies?

Tobogganing, sliding on the belly while pushing with feet and flippers, is faster and cheaper than the wobbling walk over long stretches of sea ice.

New Zealand's rare hoiho is which penguin species?

The hoiho is the yellow-eyed penguin, named for the pale yellow band that circles its eyes and wraps around the back of the head; it is among the rarest penguins, numbering only a few thousand.

In the Linux world, what is the name of the penguin mascot?

The Linux mascot is Tux, drawn by Larry Ewing in 1996 after Torvalds asked for 'a slightly fat penguin sitting down after having eaten a great meal'; the 2009 kernel 2.6.29 briefly swapped him for Tuz, a Tasmanian devil.

How do penguin parents recognize their chick among thousands in a colony?

Emperors, which build no nest to return to, have the widest variation in individual calls of any penguin. Penguins' hearing is only average for a bird, but it is enough.

Which giant penguin genus of the Eocene reached about 1.8 m from beak to tail and 90 kg?

Anthropornis lived 45 to 33 million years ago in what is now Antarctica and New Zealand; its flipper still bent at the elbow, a leftover from flying ancestors.

By roughly what share had the African penguin population fallen by 2020 versus pre-industrial times?

Roughly 95% or more: from well over a million birds in the early 1900s to fewer than 20,000 breeding pairs by 2020, and the IUCN listed the species as Critically Endangered in 2024.

What is the name of the cold ocean current that allows the Galápagos Penguin to survive at the equator?

The Cromwell Current (also called the Equatorial Undercurrent) brings cold, nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to the western Galápagos Islands, allowing penguins to survive at equatorial latitudes.

What is the scientific order that all penguin species belong to?

All penguins belong to the order Sphenisciformes and the family Spheniscidae. The name comes from the Greek word "spheniskos" meaning little wedge, referring to their wing shape.

Which country has the most penguin species breeding within its territory?

New Zealand and its sub-Antarctic islands are home to more penguin species than any other country, with at least 9 species breeding in its territory, including several endemic species like the Yellow-eyed Penguin.

Roy and Silo, the male penguin pair that hatched the chick Tango, lived at a zoo in which city?

The chick they raised at New York's Central Park Zoo was named Tango, and the picture book And Tango Makes Three became one of the most frequently challenged titles in US libraries.

Emperor and king penguin chicks huddle in what kind of group while both parents fish?

A crèche lets both parents forage at once, so the chicks grow faster; emperor chicks in one become visibly nervous when a helicopter approaches within a kilometre.

Roughly what share of an emperor penguin's insulation comes from its feathers rather than its fat?

Feathers provide 80–90% of an emperor's insulation: contour feathers sit at only about 9 per square centimetre, but the dense afterfeathers and down beneath do most of the work.

What rare genetic condition produces entirely black penguins?

Melanism, an overproduction of dark pigment, turns the normally white front black. Leucism does the reverse, washing colour out, and has produced pale 'blonde' penguins in the wild.

Adélie Land, and the Adélie penguin, were named after the wife of which French explorer?

Jules Dumont d'Urville named the coast Adélie Land for his wife Adèle in January 1840, and his expedition collected the first Adélie penguin specimens there.

Humboldt penguins historically dug their nest burrows into what material?

Humboldt penguins burrowed into thick guano deposits; nineteenth-century fertiliser miners stripped the guano from Peruvian and Chilean islands, wiping out the breeding grounds along with them.

Punta Tombo, home to a huge Magellanic penguin colony, is in which country?

Punta Tombo is in Argentina's Chubut Province, about 110 km south of Trelew, and holds the country's largest Magellanic colony; it has been a protected reserve since 1979.

Which crested penguin nests among tree roots in dense coastal rainforest?

The Fiordland penguin, known to Māori as tawaki, nests under tree roots and boulders in the wet coastal rainforest of New Zealand's south-western South Island.

Which penguin looks like a macaroni but has a white or pale grey face instead of a black one?

The royal penguin is so close to the macaroni that some authorities lump them as one species; hybrids between the two have been recorded in the wild.

Where was a plant rendering 2,000 penguins at a time for their oil in 1905?

On Macquarie Island, Joseph Hatch's steam digesters boiled down royal and king penguins for oil until Tasmania withdrew his licence in 1919; each bird yielded about half a litre.

The emperor penguin's species name honours Johann Reinhold Forster, naturalist on whose voyage?

Forster sailed as naturalist on James Cook's second voyage (1772–75) and may have seen emperors himself in 1773–74 but logged them as king penguins; the species was not formally described until 1844.

An emperor penguin egg is roughly what share of the mother's body weight?

At just 2.3% of the mother's weight, the 460-470 g egg is one of the smallest relative to maternal weight of any bird, and nearly 16% of it is thick protective shell.

Besides pigeons and flamingos, which birds can secrete 'crop milk' to feed a chick?

Male emperor penguins secrete a curd-like 'milk' from a gland in the oesophagus, 59% protein and 28% fat, to tide the chick over for a few days if the mother is late returning.

Where near the Antarctic Peninsula's tip is the northernmost emperor penguin colony?

About 4,000 emperor pairs breed on sea ice off Snow Hill Island's south-western corner, the northernmost known emperor colony; James Clark Ross named the island in 1843 for its snow cover.

A vagrant emperor penguin came ashore on a beach in November 2024 in which country?

Surfers met the bird on the beach at Denmark, Western Australia; it was thought to have swum from eastern Antarctica and was taken into care.

A juvenile emperor stranded in New Zealand in 2011 needed surgery after swallowing 3 kg of what?

The bird had eaten 3 kg of sand, apparently mistaking it for snow, plus sticks and stones; after recovering he was released with a tracker, which went silent eight days later.

Several dictionaries trace the word 'penguin' to words for 'white head' in which language?

Some dictionaries derive 'penguin' from Welsh pen gwyn, 'white head'; the name first belonged to the great auk, possibly via White Head Island in Newfoundland, though the auk's head was actually black.

What does the name of the early fossil penguin genus Waimanu mean in Māori?

Waimanu means 'water bird' in Māori (wai = water, manu = bird); it lived around 62–60 million years ago, soon after the dinosaurs vanished, and was already roughly emperor-penguin sized.

Fossil feathers of the Peruvian giant penguin Inkayacu revealed what colouring?

Inkayacu's feathers were grey and reddish brown: the 36-million-year-old skeleton, nicknamed Pedro, was the first penguin fossil found with feathers, and modern penguins owe their black to unusually wide melanosomes.

Batman's foe the Penguin first appeared in December 1941 in which comic?

The Penguin debuted in Detective Comics #58 (December 1941); Bob Kane and Bill Finger created him, and Kane said the look came from the top-hatted penguin mascot of Kool cigarettes.

Who played the Penguin in the 1960s Batman television series?

Burgess Meredith played the Penguin, quacking laugh and all, and reprised the role in the 1966 spin-off film; Romero was the Joker and Gorshin the Riddler in the same series.

Who played the Penguin in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992)?

Danny DeVito played the grotesque, sewer-dwelling Oswald Cobblepot, sharing the film with Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman and Christopher Walken's Max Shreck.

Penguin Books was co-founded in 1935 by which publisher and his two brothers?

Allen Lane founded Penguin with his brothers Richard and John in 1935 as an imprint of The Bodley Head; the first sixpenny paperbacks shipped from the crypt of a Marylebone church.

Penguin Books' 1960 obscenity trial concerned which D. H. Lawrence novel?

Lady Chatterley's Lover was the book: the acquittal in R v Penguin Books Ltd (1960) let the unexpurgated edition sell around three million copies within months, and the case is seen as a turning point for British censorship.

The Pittsburgh Penguins entered the NHL in which expansion year?

The Penguins joined in the 1967 expansion that doubled the NHL from six teams to twelve; the name won a fan contest that drew some 26,000 entries.

The Pittsburgh Penguins took their name partly from the nickname of their original home, the Civic Arena; what was it?

The Igloo was what Pittsburghers called the Civic Arena, thanks to its retractable domed roof; the team moved in 2010 to the arena now called PPG Paints Arena.

In October 1967 the Penguins became the first expansion club to beat which Original Six team?

The Penguins beat the Chicago Black Hawks 4–2 on 21 October 1967, a rare highlight in a first season they finished 27-34-13.

Which is the only NCAA Division I program whose teams are nicknamed the Penguins?

Youngstown State's mascots Pete and Penny wear scarves and stocking caps; the Penguins name dates to a freezing basketball road trip to West Liberty on 30 January 1933.

In Penguins of Madagascar (2014), the villain Dave is what kind of animal?

Dave is an octopus, voiced by John Malkovich, a jilted former zoo attraction out to avenge years of being upstaged by cuter penguins.

Which of the Madagascar penguins is the youngest, hatched from an egg the others rescued?

Private is the youngest: the 2014 spin-off opens with Skipper, Kowalski and Rico saving his egg from leopard seals on an abandoned whaling ship and adopting him as a brother.

In The Wrong Trousers, Feathers McGraw passes himself off as a chicken by wearing what?

Feathers wears a red rubber glove on his head to pass as a chicken; the silent penguin lodger plans to steal a blue diamond using Wallace's Techno Trousers, and the disguise somehow fools everyone.

Feathers McGraw returned as the villain of which 2024 Wallace & Gromit film?

In Vengeance Most Fowl, Feathers, imprisoned in the town zoo, hacks Wallace's robot gnome Norbot to break out and go after the blue diamond again.

Opus, the 'existentialist penguin' drawn by Berkeley Breathed, starred in which 1980s newspaper comic strip?

Bloom County introduced Opus in June 1981 as a one-off gag when Mike Binkley brought home what he thought was a German Shepherd.

Pablo, a 'cold-blooded penguin' seeking warmer climes, appears in which 1940s Disney film?

Pablo's segment in The Three Caballeros (1944), narrated by Sterling Holloway, ends with him reaching the Galápagos and missing the cold; he later inspired Walter Lantz's Chilly Willy.

Edinburgh Zoo's knighted king penguin Sir Nils Olav is mascot of which country's King's Guard?

Norway's King's Guard adopted a penguin at Edinburgh Zoo in 1972 and promotes him on each visit; Nils Olav III was made a major general in 2023, the highest rank any penguin has held.

Zavodovski Island, site of the largest penguin colony on Earth, belongs to which island group?

Zavodovski, in the South Sandwich Islands, holds more than a million chinstrap pairs nesting around the active volcano Mount Curry; early visitors named its headlands Stench Point, Reek Point and Pungent Point.

In winter 1911, Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard trekked to Cape Crozier to collect what?

They went for emperor penguin eggs: Wilson hoped early embryos would reveal a link between reptiles and birds, and emperors lay only in the dark of the Antarctic winter.

Which 1922 memoir by Apsley Cherry-Garrard recounts Scott's Terra Nova expedition?

The Worst Journey in the World takes its title not from the fatal polar march but from the midwinter egg-collecting trip Cherry-Garrard survived with Wilson and Bowers.

The Antarctic 'Penguin Post Office' on Goudier Island stands in which bay?

Port Lockroy's Base A was built in 1944 for the wartime Operation Tabarin and is now a museum and post office run by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust each summer.

The British Penguin biscuit, first produced in 1932, was created by a firm in which city?

William Macdonald began making the Penguin in Glasgow in 1932; the 1970s slogan 'p-p-p-pick up a Penguin' came after McVitie's took the brand over.

In the online game Club Penguin, what were the in-game pets called?

Puffles were Club Penguin's furry round pets; Disney paid $350 million for the game's creator in 2007, and the servers finally went dark on 30 March 2017.

The 2015 film Oddball dramatises a dog of which breed guarding little penguins from foxes?

Maremma sheepdogs have guarded Middle Island's little penguins since 2006, after foxes learned to cross from Warrnambool, Victoria, at low tide and nearly wiped out the colony.

During the 1982-83 El Niño, the Galápagos penguin population fell by roughly what share?

The 1982–83 El Niño cut the Galápagos penguin population by about 77%: warm water drives their fish away, and the birds skip breeding in El Niño years rather than risk dying in the attempt.

Who voiced Mumble, the tap-dancing hero of Happy Feet (2006)?

Elijah Wood voiced Mumble; Hugh Jackman played his father Memphis, modelled on Elvis Presley, and the film won the first BAFTA for Best Animated Film.

A 2015 genetic study found penguins can taste only which two of the five basic tastes?

A 2015 genome study found penguins have lost the receptors for sweet, bitter and umami, leaving only sour and salty; the loss may reflect cold-blunted taste receptors and prey swallowed whole.

Which French sub-Antarctic group includes Île aux Cochons, whose king penguin colony crashed after the 1980s?

Île aux Cochons in the Crozet Islands held around half a million king penguin pairs in the 1980s, but satellite imagery showed only about 60,000 by 2017, a crash whose cause is still debated.

Where in Australia do little penguins stage a famous nightly 'parade' across Summerland Beach?

Phillip Island's Penguin Parade has drawn tourists since the 1920s; the island's colony is estimated at around 32,000 breeding little penguins.

The gentoo's scientific species name is a misnomer because Forster wrongly placed it where?

Forster named the gentoo Aptenodytes papua in 1781, placing it in New Guinea, where no penguin lives; gentoos actually breed on sub-Antarctic islands such as the Falklands and South Georgia.

Researchers tell individual African penguins apart by the unique pattern of what?

Each African penguin's black chest spots form a unique pattern, like a fingerprint, so researchers can identify individuals from photographs without tagging them.

Grape-kun, a Humboldt penguin at Japan's Tobu Zoo, became famous in 2017 for his devotion to what?

He stared for hours at Hululu, a penguin girl from Kemono Friends; when he died that October the zoo held a memorial with the cutout beside him.

The preschool hit Pororo the Little Penguin was created in which country?

Its first two seasons were jointly made by designers from North and South Korea under a 2000 inter-Korean cooperation deal.

What happens when an emperor penguin couple drops and loses their egg during the handover?

An egg on the ice survives only a minute or two. Both birds return the next year to find new mates; emperors are serially monogamous anyway.

What is the counter-current heat exchanger in every penguin's flipper called?

The humeral plexus is a counter-current heat exchanger in which at least three branches of the axillary artery warm the returning cold blood, so even tropical species carry the same Antarctic plumbing.