Penguin popularity pleases MSU grad students who lived among them

Two Montana State University graduate students who lived among the penguins of Antarctica are happy that the birds have become so popular.

Movies, commercials and even home furnishings celebrate the penguins that Matt Becker and Dave McWethy hiked across glaciers and canoed across frigid bays to study. The doctoral students watched penguins bow under 100 mph winds and felt the slap of flippers against their legs. They ached for penguin parents who laid eggs in a nest of pebbles, warded off sea birds, watched their babies hatch, made long daily commutes for seafood and then lost their young to leopard seals.

"I think it's great, the intense interest," said Becker of Bozeman ."The penguins are certainly worthy."