Antarctica the landmass may be devoid of life, but so are the arctic islands. However there are still seals living on the pack ice right through winter, just as there are in arctic regions. For those species call the antarctic is indeed home, and they would be available as bear food year round.
(BTW most seals don’t eat penguins, most are fish eaters. Only the leopard seal regularly eats birds, although a couple of other species are opportunistic predators.)
HOBOKEN?!?
Ooooh, I’m DYIN’ again!
(Wonder if ANYONE else gets this?)
That’s not a valid argument. Plenty of isolated places diddn’t have preditors but the niche still existed. Take Mauritious, where the dodos could safely nest on the ground until man introduced rats. Or New Zealand where the giant moas lived well until humans arrived. Niches do not create species.
Both Mauritius and New Zealand were home to numerous land based predators.
Yeah, I got it. Giggling my ass off because EVERY time penguins come up I advise people in a gruff voice that Pen-Gee-Winns is Prak-Ti-Kally Chickins.
Blank stares all around, but Ibarely notice through my own laughter.
I’ve always figured that the absence of land predators is what allowed penguins to evolve to be so clumsy on land. Aren’t Puffins essentially northern analog penguins that can fly? Presumably because they need to from time to time?
Like Bugs Bunny cartoons are such obscure references…
As others have noted, there are penguin species that live and breed quite happily in places with an abundance of land based predators.
Penguins are clumsy on land for precisely the same reasons that seals and turtles are clumsy on land. An animal can choose to be ideally suited to land or water or a combinbation of both. Penguins, turtles and seals have chosen to be ideally hydrodynamic and their land performance suffers as a result.
Puffins and auks can all fly today because people have exterminated all the flightless species. In the past there were several species of flightless auks. The last one was the great auk, which once ranged from the Mediterranean to Mexico. The last one vanished about 150 years ago. Of course people have also exterminated around a dozen species of penguins.
They survived for millions of years despite the existence of land predators. Realistically the only time a seabird like this is vulnerable to land predators is when they are breeding. And at that time it doesn’t matter how agile they are on land since if the predator can’t take the adult it will take the young. As such flight has no real survival advantage WRT predators.
It’s not land predators these birds needed to fly to escape, it’s people.
I hate to continue the hijack, but… if you got that, did you get the reference in the cartoon for, “Can you help a fellow American down on his luck?”
As others have noted, there are penguin species that live and breed quite happily in places with an abundance of land based predators.
Penguins are clumsy on land for precisely the same reasons that seals and turtles are clumsy on land. An animal can choose to be ideally suited to land or water or a combinbation of both. Penguins, turtles and seals have chosen to be ideally hydrodynamic and their land performance suffers as a result.
Puffins and auks can all fly today because people have exterminated all the flightless species. In the past there were several species of flightless auks. The last one was the great auk, which once ranged from the Mediterranean to Mexico. The last one vanished about 150 years ago. Of course people have also exterminated around a dozen species of penguins.
They survived for millions of years despite the existence of land predators. Realistically the only time a seabird like this is vulnerable to land predators is when they are breeding. And at that time it doesn’t matter how agile they are on land since if the predator can’t take the adult it will take the young. As such flight has no real survival advantage WRT predators.
It’s not land predators these birds needed to fly to escape, it’s people.
If recent television advertising is any guide, after an initial moment of discomfort, the polar bears and penguins will dance to the Beach Boys while enjoying a Coke.
Actually, the word “penquin” origin is the Great Auk, which occupied the same niche as some penquin species do. Thus, indeed- there were “penquins” at one time in the Artic, but mainly on the small islands offshore.
Penquins could sruvive very nicey then, and could (once they figured danger was coming from the landward direction) escape polar bears. However, they’d have to have a secure nesting place, bear-free. Many non-antartic penquin species are already used to land predators. But yes, in general, flightless birds do poorly around land predators. Even though penquins can swim to escape, they need mostly predator-free breeding grounds.
Polar bears would likely also do just fine in the Antartic. For a while, they’d find the eating remarkable easy, as the animals down south are not used to much danger from the landward side.
This site (among others) says that the only flightless alcid was the Great Auk.
A certain amount of googling suggests that 32 extinct species of penguins are recognized (including one that may have exceeded 300 lbs). But I was unable to find anything about species exterminated by humans. Do you have further info?
Neither “No Turning Back” (Richard Ellis 20040 or “Extinct Species of the World” (Balouet 1990) list any member of Order Sphenisciformes or penguins as extinct. Both concern themselves primarily with the Holocene (which is where you have Humans making species extinct mostly) but also cover the Human occupied areas of the Pleistocene. I can’t find any data on exactly when all those species went away, but certainly none did so after their discovery by Man. As “The first documentation of penguin sightings is credited to members of the Portuguese voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1497”
The earliest pengiun dates to "Eocene Period (38 to 42 million years ago) (Carroll, 1988).
b. Fossil records show that the largest extinct species lived in the Miocene Period (11 to 25 million years ago)." (thats** Xema**'s giant penguin, I would guess)
Why “Scientists believe that ancient penguins began disappearing about the same time that the number of prehistoric seals and small whales started increasing in the oceans. Some scientists hypothesize that seals, whales, and penguins may have competed for the same food source, and that the penguins may have become prey themselves. Both factors may have contributed to their extinction (Simpson, 1976)”
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Penguins/scientific.html
Dodos- yes. The Great Auk- certainly. But penguins? Nope. :dubious:
At the start of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” panhandling Fred Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) asks that question of every passerby.
Everybody knows that penguins could live in the Arctic but only if they were specially trained penguins who were smart enough to outwit the polar bears.
As cite, see Mr Popper’s Penguins.
Colibri has it right. Well said.
Really? I’m racking my brain and I can’t think of any examples. AFAIK, there are only two mammal species native to NZ, and both are bats. I don’t think tuataras are very big on egg eating, so… what were the numerous land-based predators? (I’m also fairly certain that many, if not all of the NZ penguins are endangered now that they co-exist with predatory mammals, just like many of the other flightless birds there).
I suspect that Blake is speaking of predatory birds rather than mammals. Neither NZ nor Mauritius had any native land mammals other than bats.