Penguins
When you think of penguins, chances are you picture the emperor penguin or something very similar, fishing the icy Antarctic waters or braced together against cruelly cold winds. But did you know almost all species of penguin live in temperate climates? A statistically more accurate picture of a penguin would be off the coasts of South America or New Zealand or Cape Horn in Africa, plying their trade in cool water with conifer forests in the distance.
Reading about penguins, as a group they are an impressive lot. Only one species, the Galapagos Penguin, is ever found north of the Equator, and that one just barely so. All penguins are flightless, being adapted for swimming gracefully and speedily through pounding ocean surf. They spend roughly half of their entire lives in the water, the other half on land. Penguins typically are monogamous, forming strong pair bonds and keeping them for many years. Because they tend to live on patches of rough, hard-to-access shoreline as a predator avoidance strategy, most have never encountered a human, and penguins are famously curious and unafraid when the rare human approaches (you should not approach penguins, even so).
Many of the dozens of penguin species are designated as Endangered, Threatened, or in some kind of sensitive status. Their main habitat, the ocean, is changing and not for the better. Antarctic penguins are losing more critical sea ice every year. Hopefully we can hang onto the penguin populations we have until things like climate change can be slowed and reversed.
Here endeth the lesson on penguins.
Bike Newbie 