Penguin Identification Chart

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Wheeeee!

G.R.Guy Nature Photography

Penguin Parade

Cute Baby Gentoo Penguin

Want to monitor climate change? P-p-p-pick up a penguin!

We are used to hearing about the effects of climate change in terms of unusual animal behaviour, such as altering patterns of fish and bird migration. However, scientists at the University of Birmingham are trying out an alternative bio-indicator – the king penguin – to investigate whether they can be used to monitor the effects of climate change.

“If penguins are travelling further or diving deeper for food, that tells us something about the availability of particular fish in regions of the Antarctic. We may be able to assess the pressure exerted by king penguins on this ecosystem, and look at the effects of both climate change and overfishing in this region of the world”, says Dr Lewis Halsey who will present his results on Wednesday 4th April at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow.

Penguin mourned at Maryland Zoo

Maryland Zoo in Baltimore workers are mourning the bird they called 10-63.

Veterinarians called in a specialist to try to correct a congenital spine defect that plagued the 6-month-old male penguin. He had been recovering until Friday, when workers found 10-63 lying in a corner of his enclosure at the zoo’s hospital.

“We are really saddened by his death, but we learned a lot from the surgery and from his after-care,” zoo veterinarian Carol Bradford said.

Zoo staff are awaiting a detailed necropsy, an animal autopsy, from Johns Hopkins University before determining a cause of death, but Bradford said, “preliminary reports indicate he may have had a respiratory condition, possibly due to being hospitalized and the operation.”

The Maryland Zoo has a colony of about 51 African penguins living at Rock Island, one of the zoo’s most popular exhibits. They breed enough young each year to supply other zoos, she said.

Gentoo Penguins, Antarctica

from flickr, by Rita Willaert

Penguins, both funny and lovable, are all the rage these days

Penguins are anything but rare birds in Hollywood these days.

In the footsteps of March of the Penguins and Happy Feet, the wave continues with the recently released Farce of the Penguins spoof, the DVD release of 1995's animated The Pebble and the Penguin and the upcoming summer cartoon Surf's Up, about surfing penguins.

The penguins that instigated the action in Madagascar starred in their own cartoon short and are being developed as lead players for a cartoon TV show.

Even Robert Altman's final movie, A Prairie Home Companion, featured Garrison Keillor telling a droll joke about the birds: "Two penguins are standing on an ice floe. The first penguin says, `You look like you're wearing a tuxedo.' The second penguin says, `What makes you think I'm not?'"

When asked why the joke is funny, Keillor replies, "I guess because people laugh at it."

The same somehow holds for penguins. People laugh at them and love them unconditionally. Why? Just because they're funny and lovable.

"They're an anthropomorphic gift. A little kid dressed in too many winter clothes, walking around and falling in the snow," said Chris Jenkins, producer of Surf's Up, which hits theaters in June.

Giant Penguin

Humboldt Penguin

(Photo: AFP/DDP/Joerg Koch)

Feeding the Baby

(AP Photo/Brian Witte)

Somebody home?

from flickr, by Remco Douma

Jackass Penguin

Check

from flick, by Leanne A

Blonde Penguin

Penguinpix: Quality Photos and Posters of:

· Penguins and their World
· Penguin Personalities
· Huge Antarctic Landscapes
· Rare Blonde Penguin

Videeo: Pingu Dance Rap

In 1989, David Hasselhoff released (in Switzerland only) the single "Pingu Dance", a rap song based on the Pingu shorts and featuring a number of samples of Pinguish.

Visitor waddles in and makes itself at home

A fairy penguin popped into the Clark family's Tasmanian home for a visit on Wednesday and spent the day in the bathtub.

Sometime before Wednesday morning, the little penguin had waddled about 100 metres up the beach, crossing a railway track and a road in the process and wandered into the Clark's front yard in West Ulverstone about three hours northwest of Hobart in Tasmania.

Garry Clark said when the front door was opened to let the dog out to the toilet, the penguin entered.

"The dog went out and a penguin came in," Mr Clark said.

"I was in getting ready for work and my son came in and said `Dad, there's a penguin in the lounge room'.

"I thought, `that can't be right'."

But a penguin in the lounge room there was, and a friendly one at that.

Mr Clark said the animal appeared quite comfortable and made no problem when it was picked up.

The penguin was popped in the bathtub with a little water for the day.

"We sat him in there and he splashed about in the water every now and again."

A bit of thawed salmon from the freezer did not tempt the penguin.

On advice from the Parks and Wildlife Service, the penguin remained in the tub until Wednesday evening.

Then the Clark family gathered it up and took it across to the beach to let it go.

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."

The gift

For gentoo penguins, it's all about who's got the best rocks. Like a human offering jewelry, this gentoo male at the Edinburgh Zoo presents a large pebble on Tuesday in hopes of winning over a female.

But sometimes finding the flashiest gifts isn't enough. During the mating season—which begins in March and lasts up to six weeks—males suffering from "pebble envy" will steal the best-looking rocks and pawn them off as their own.

The pebbles will eventually become parts of the penguins' nests—large circular piles of stone that can reach 8 inches (20 centimeters) in height and 10 inches (25 centimeters) in diameter.

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