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Peter the Emperor Penguin (19/26)


This is also part of this series: All About Animals (26)

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Subjects: Animal Behaviour, Animals, Evolution, Geography, Natural History, Nature

Grade Level: K-Gr3
Producer: BBC
Closed Captioned: No		 Running Time: 25 mins
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Study Guide: No
Copyright Date: 2004
Available in French: No

Peter lives in Antarctica, the coldest place on the planet. He endures temperatures as low as minus 60º Celsius. He was born in a colony of penguins on the Ross Ice Shelf. 25,000 penguins live here, and with the chicks just recently hatched, it is very noisy. Emperor penguins are the largest of the world's 17 different penguin species. Standing over a meter tall, they weigh around 30kg. Penguins can't fly, but they can swim. Underwater, they are perfectly streamlined and completely waterproof. Emperors dive deeper and longer than any other bird: nearly 500m down, for over 10 minutes. During these dives they catch their food. Emperors mainly eat fish but they also take squid and krill. Before he was born, Peter's mum and dad had to walk over 100km across the ice to get to the breeding grounds. Like all female penguins, she carried a single egg, and within hours of laying passed it to dad, a tricky piece of manoeuvring, to look after it through the winter. Safely snuggled into dad's brood pouch, the egg stayed a healthy 30ºC. Dad was well stocked up with fat reserves and spent 115 freezing days without food. Mum spent the winter feeding in the sea, then returned two months later when Peter hatched. Aside from the freezing Antarctic conditions, penguins have few enemies – but there is one who would make a quick meal of Peter. When he reaches the sea, he must run the gauntlet of leopard seals. At nearly 3 metres long, with a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, they are deadly.

Links: http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/

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