We recently watched David Attenborough’s Life in the Freezer and have seen other interesting films on Antarctica. The diversity of life is fascinating including several species of penguins.
Almost all life forms have enough sense to get the hell out of there once winter comes a’knocking at the door moving north to more hospital climate.
The one exception seems to be those nutty Emperor Penguins who have an astonishing ritual of walking south for hundreds of miles to hatch their eggs. The females then give the eggs to the males who keep them warm through the horrible winter. Meanwhile the females trek all the way back to the edge of the icecap to swim for food and get fat.
The males suffer though the worst winters on earth almost starving to death. In spring as the eggs are ready to hatch the females trek all the way back again to get and protect the chicks. Then the pore starving males head back to the water followed by the females and chicks.
It would seem that a better script could have been written for these poor things. I realize they seem to survive on the regimen but it is the most ridiculous procedure anywhere in the animal kingdom that I have ever heard of.
Why in the hell can’t they just swim north to South America like all the rest where there is normal climate and plenty of food for all of them?
Normal climate and plenty of food also means plenty of predators. Sure, they may be uncomfortable, but they’re utterly protected from everything except the weather. That’s worth a lot. Most importantly, of course, is the fact that it works. That’s all it takes for evolution.
Because there are other species farther north that are better adapted to the conditions there, like the closely related King Penguin.
The bizarre life history of the Emperor Penguin no doubt evolved gradually over millions of years as the climate of Antarctica gradually became colder. They still do it because it works.
They lay their eggs during mid-winter so that the chicks will be nearly grown by the Antarctic spring. If they laid their eggs in summer, the chicks would encounter worse conditions in the winter when they were ready to become independent. Their make their colonies well away from the edge of the ice, because as the spring advances the ice melts and the distance to the sea becomes much shorter. If they laid their eggs closer to the sea, the ice would melt out from under them before the chicks were independent.
I once asked a similar question to the zookeeper at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago in the birdhouse.
It was about crazy robins in Chicago that don’t fly south.
She told me birds are a lot hardier than you’d think. She said as long as a bird can get enough food, staying warm isn’t really a problem. They just find a small crack and crawl in and fluff their feathers.
She said, they can survive really low temps so long as they can get a steady supply of food to fuel their metabolism.
Feathers are quite warm, and the penguins have enough fat to live on so food is taken care of. If you watch the penguins shift positions after a bit, with the ones in the middle coming to the edge. This way none of them are exposed too much
So the penguins may be cold by our standards, but they are quite happy. They have fat to live off of, the feathers and the huddles of other penguins, keep them warm, and there is nothing to eat the babies.
The reason birds return north after flying south is food. The longer days make for many more bugs. Birds love bugs. Even birds that don’t eat bugs as adults usually eat bugs when they are babies. So this means tons of protein and it makes the trip back north worth it to the nesting parents.