Amazing Creature Feature: [Penguins]

Photo by Cornelius Ventures on Unsplash

It's no secret that penguins can live in very cold places. Antarctica can get down to -76 Ferenhight or -60 Celcius (1). So how do penguins survive that insane cold? They huddle. You may have seen the massive group huddling sessions penguins have on tv documentary but it is even more impressive that they work so well. When you see it on tv they all still look so cold but in the center of the huddle, temperatures have been known to reach 99.5 Ferenhight or 37.5 Celsius (3). The penguins in the middle have to make sure they rotate outwards so they don't overheat. If you want to read more about this or read the study that determined this read this article: https://phys.org/news/2015-12-penguin-huddling-complicated-thought.html

Another amazing thing that penguins can do is dive, really deep. They fish for their food so they have gotten pretty good at what they do. A penguin can dive up to 1850 feet into ice-cold water. Once there they can hold their breath for over 20 minutes (2).

1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/08/climate/antarctica-record-temperature.html

2 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/emperor-penguin#:~:text=At%20sea%2C%20emperor%20penguins%20can,for%20more%20than%2020%20minutes.

3 https://phys.org/news/2015-12-penguin-huddling-complicated-thought.html