As the video “If Only Every Day was World Penguin Day” shows us, they are friendly and peaceful. Our family went whale watching one year and had the fortune to see penguins. Penguins are lovely to watch and interact with. The average wild penguin can live to be 15 or 20 years old”. They are colonial birds-birds that nest and breed in close proximity as a group-and their colonies are called rookeries, which may number in the tens of thousands of birds. Penguins are largely monogamous birds and may have the same mate for life. The fastest swimming penguin is the gentoo, which can swim up to 22 miles an hour. Giant Petrels do not really have any natural predators, although they will come into potentially harmful conflict when trying to hunt Skua chicks and eggs. It can be found on the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. The smallest is the appropriately named little penguin, which is 12 inches in height and weighs two pounds. Of the 18 species, the largest is the emperor penguin, which can grow up to 48 inches and weigh 90 pounds. They face danger from oil spills and other pollution, from climate change that alters their food sources, from overfishing, and from illegal poaching and egg harvesting. They are threatened by introduced predators such as dogs, cats, rats, and ferrets, that eat their eggs. They risk being eaten at the hands of natural predators such as leopard seals, sea lions, and sharks. There are only about 5,000 of the rarest species, the yellow-eyed penguin. Five of these species are endangered and face extinction. For example, they are prey species for seals, while their eggs and chicks are a source of food for other predators in the area. On the other hand, the penguins are threatened by their natural predators. There are 18 penguin species, 13 of which have declining populations. The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is a species of penguin that lives in southern African waters. Both male and female penguins have the same coloration. They are carnivores that eat marine animals. It also hides them from the prey they hunt. Their light-colored front and dark-colored back are called countershading it provides camouflage both from above and below water when they are swimming, protecting them from predators. They are the deepest diving and fastest swimming birds. Some can stay underwater for up to twenty minutes. Penguins use their wings as flippers, and their streamlined bodies also help them swim. The birds cross into the Northern Hemisphere while swimming to feed. The northernmost penguins are Galapagos penguins, which fittingly live on the Galapagos Islands, which are near the equator. They are found in Antarctica, South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, and on small islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. Some believe the name comes from the Welsh words “pen” and “gwyn” that mean “head” and “white.” Penguins are nonflying birds that are native to the Southern Hemisphere. The word “penguin” first appeared in print in the 1500s, and was originally applied to a black and white seabird called an auk that is now extinct. It appears the day stemmed from an earlier “National Penguin Day,” which may date back to the 1970s. Observed by many conservation groups, it takes place on April 25 because it is around this time each year that the Adelie penguins of Antarctica begin migrating north. “ World Penguin Day celebrates and raises awareness for penguins. The web dosen’t say much about penguins in Canada, so I took this global information from a great source. We always say Tweet Tweet is a special penguin because she can fly and she has the most beautiful colours. You can see Tweet & Friends on our publications page. We just couldn’t make this day pass without saying something!! As you know we have a series written by myself and Lois Wint-Rose. "If we walk back to the time of this penguin 30-plus million years ago, this entire area was under water," Dr Thomas said.Today is a special day for EAW Publications and the Tweet Tweet series., World Penguin Day. Today the area is a tidal harbour with grey mudstone cliffs. "Whenever we see some shift in body proportions like this, we immediately think, 'was there something interesting about the ecology of ,'" Dr Thomas said. To work out what it was, the researchers used 3D scanning to get fine details of all the bones and compared this against a digital library of other penguin fossils, as well as skeletons of living penguins, to see where it fit in the family tree. "We are incredibly grateful to the Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club that discovered it, collected it, and have been looking after it," Dr Thomas said. Mr Templer continued working on the fossil before it was donated to the Waikato Museum for safekeeping. "What amazed us was how intact this fossil was."Īfter a hard day's work, the team ferried the block of rock containing the fossil on a boat back across the harbour. "We only had a few hours while the tide was out to get this thing out.
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