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Emperor of the Antarctic
| Article
# : |
11873 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1994 |
1,633 Words |
| Author
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Gail Dutton
Gail Dutton is an independent writer specializing in science
and technology. She lives in Southern California. |
January. Antarctica is basking in the early days of summer. Daytime temperatures hover in the balmy range, around 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and the penguins are taking full advantage of the warmth to raise their young before beginning their winter migration northward. All except the emperor penguins.
These birds summer far from the continent near drifting ice floes, swimming hundreds of kilometers in their quest for piscine bounty. As winter approaches, the emperor penguins will return to Antarctica to mate, lay their eggs, and raise their young through blizzards and temperatures that may drop beneath -60 degrees Fahrenheit on the firm ice surrounding that continent.
The only penguin to reproduce during the Antarctic winter, the emperor is the largest of Antarctica's penguins as well as the hardiest. Adults stand nearly four feet tall and weigh up to 90 pounds. Colonies of thousands of these birds form on smooth, level ice in the lee--and sometimes the windward side--of ice cliffs, which provide some shelter from the wind.
Emperors range hundreds of miles during each foraging period, with the greatest recorded traveling distance being 885 miles in 29 days, a distance equivalent to a trip from Detroit to Washington, D.C., and back. That particular penguin, however, never ranged more than about 30 miles in a straight line from the colony. These penguins, both male and female, appear to have a very extensive feeding territory. Not only do they traverse many miles, but they also capture fish and squid at all levels of the water, diving as deep as the ocean floor some 1,600 feet beneath the surface. Because they don't migrate north during the winter, this deep foraging is particularly important.
Their migration patterns also were important in delaying their discovery, forcing explorers to visit Antarctica during the colder months. The emperor penguins, members of the Aptenodytes genus of the Spheniscidae family, have the scientific name Aptenodytes forsteri. They were named after two German naturalists, the father-and-son team of G. and J.R. Forster, who actually described a different but similar bird--the king penguin--when they accompanied Captain James Cook on his 1771-75 circumnavigation of the globe. It wasn't until December 1820, however, that Europeans actually saw an emperor penguin.
Mating for life?
More than 80 years later, in 1902, the
...
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