Today, April 25th, is World Penguin Day, a day to celebrate nature’s classiest and most beloved of birds. The holiday was created by scientists at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, when they noticed that April 25th was the day that the Adelie penguins returned to the area from the summer away at sea every year. Zoos, parks, and conservationists use this day to promote the health and conservation of the penguin.
What’s a lover of the world’s most popular bird to do? You could head to the Toronto Zoo and go to the daily African penguin keeper talk at 2pm, watch one of the many popular films that celebrate the penguin, or the California Academy of Science’s penguin live cam. Maclean’s also has a delightful video about Toronto Zoo’s most famous penguins, Buddy and Pedro, the gay penguins. The Pew Charitable Trusts is also holding a live Twitter chat with penguin experts this morning, where they’ll be talking about penguin biology, behaviour, and conservation, particularly the push to establish marine reserves in the Ross Sea and East Antarctica.
You can also celebrate by reading random penguin facts, like:
- Penguins are often associated with the Antarctic, but only two species breed there — the Adelie and the Emperor penguin.
- Penguins can live as far north as South America, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Galapagos Islands.
- They are only found naturally in the Southern hemisphere. Scientists tried to start a breeding colony on Norway’s Lofoten islands in the 1930s, but they had all disappeared by 1949.
- There is a breed of penguin called the Macaroni penguin.
- Male Emperor penguins are the ones who do most of the child rearing — they spend weeks guarding and caring for their young while the females are out looking for food.
- All 17 breeds of penguin are protected from being hunted or having their eggs gathered for food, though only four are officially listed as endangered: the Galapagos, Humbolt, Erect Crested, and Yellow Eyed. The Emperor and Southern Rockhopper penguins are under consideration for being put on the endangered list.
- The main reasons penguins are threatened is because of habitat loss, climate change, and overfishing.
Happy World Penguin Day!
[via The Ian Somerhalder Foundation]
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Megan Patterson is the Science and Technology Editor at Paper Droids and currently a Toronto Standard intern. She also tweets more than is healthy or wise.
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