The Emperor Penguin

By Terri Estes

The emperor penguin is the largest of the 18 penguin species. Males and females are similar in size and adults weigh between 45 and 100 pounds. Their head and back are black, their bellies are white, and they have a pale yellow breast and bright yellow ear patches.

Emperors reside in the cold, cold Antarctic. They have excellent insulation in the form of many layers of scale-like feathers. It takes winds of over 60 knots to get them ruffled. Their nasal chambers also recover most of the heat that is normally lost during exhalation. They have the ability to recycle their own body heat because their arteries and veins lie close together and they can cool the blood on the way to their feet and wings, and warm it on the way back to the heart. Their feet also have special fat pads to keep them from freezing.

These birds have a streamlined body, and their wings are flattened and stiffened into flippers for swimming. Their diet consists primarily of fish, but also includes crustaceans and squid. While foraging for food in the ocean, they can stay submerged for over 20 minutes and dive to depths of over 1,700 feet.

The emperors are amazing birds. Not only do they survive the Antarctic winter, but they breed during the worst weather conditions on Earth. This is the only breed of penguin that breeds during the Antarctic winter. They mate for life and will travel 30 to 75 miles over ice in the harshest weather to breeding colonies. Some of these colonies can contain several thousand birds. The female lays a single egg and then it is incubated by the male for a little over two months while the female returns to the sea to feed. Once the chick is hatched, the parents take turns foraging at sea and caring for the chick in the colony.

The emperor penguin is considered threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. This is primarily due to climate change causing their crucial sea ice habitat to melt. Record low sea ice has led to widespread breeding failures with complete colonies vanishing is recent years.

This is the iconic Antarctic species. No other animal is so perfectly adapted to survive in the most extreme and remote place on the face of the Earth. We can only hope for their long-term survival.