Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome back to Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory, and I'm here to show you just how weird this world of ours really is.
[00:00:14] If you guys haven't yet, be sure to visit mallorysadventures.com for all fun, weird, unusual facts about travel and weird history and occult story studies.
[00:00:27] And be sure to check out Weird World Adventures on Amazon Prime.
[00:00:33] Season two should be coming out any day now. If you're listening to this, it's been a journey, but we are, we are there. So I'm very excited about that.
[00:00:44] So if you don't know, January 20th was Penguin Awareness Day and April 25th is World Penguin Day. But since January 20th was last week, I wanted to do an episode dedicated to my favorite animal, the penguin.
[00:01:03] So I'm sure if you guys have listened to this podcast for a while, you've known that I've worked with two types of warm weather penguins.
[00:01:12] I worked on a, what I like to call penguin rescue mission with the South African Penguin Project I on Robin island, where we were monitoring the nesting habits and also, you know, conducting rescues to penguin chicks that might be underweight over on Robin island because the population of the African penguins is horrifically low and they will likely be extinct potentially within my lifetime, which is really sad.
[00:01:38] So that was a, it was a really wonderful experience to get to be there and work with those African penguins and try to help their population stop dwindling. Though it's probably a pretty lost cause, unfortunately. Still gotta try. And I also worked with Magellanic penguins in Patagonia in Argentina, and the Patagonian penguins, the Magellanic penguins, there are 3 million of those around the world, so they're not going anywhere.
[00:02:07] And they're very similar.
[00:02:09] Both, both of those warm weather penguins, they look very much alike, except the African penguins have spots and the Magellanic penguins have two sets of stripes and no spots.
[00:02:19] And there's a few differences on the head, but more or less they look very similar to each other. So I don't claim to be a penguin expert, but I do know an awful lot about African and Magellanic penguins, specifically Robben island penguins and the penguins in Cabo de Bios in Argentina.
[00:02:36] And I thought it would be fun to give some fun, weird facts about penguins because for some reason, first of all, people only associate penguins with the cold weather, with Antarctica. But that's actually not true. There are definitely warm weather penguins. There's penguins in Argentina, where it's pretty hot, that dig their little nests and Burrows into kind of like a dusty, deserty kind of atmosphere, which is an interesting thing to see.
[00:03:04] And people think they're cute. They think, march the penguin. But they're really very loud and. And they projectile poop. And they're very not good neighbors. They like to steal from each other and poop in each other's nest. And, you know, they're nasty little poopy projectile birds, but I love them very, very, very much somehow. Anyway, and let's go ahead and talk about some interesting facts about penguins.
[00:03:29] These are probably.
[00:03:31] I have not read these. I wanted to read these cold here to see my reaction. And if they were things that I knew a lot of these look like they're probably catered to the more Antarctic penguins, which most people talk more about. So that wouldn't surprise me.
[00:03:44] Let's see.
[00:03:48] Fact number one, which I know because I just said, is that January 20th is Penguin Awareness Day and January 25th is World Penguin Day, two days dedicated to those adorable little pingies. Very excited about that.
[00:04:01] So this one's fun.
[00:04:03] A group of penguins in the water is called a raft.
[00:04:08] I like it. I actually didn't know that a group of penguins on land is called a wattle. I did know that other collective nouns for penguins include a rookery, a colony. That's the common term I've used for them. And a huddle.
[00:04:24] Did you know penguins sneeze to get rid of seawater they ingest while hunting for fish?
[00:04:32] It actually gets filtered from their bloodstream by the supraopital gland between their eyes.
[00:04:38] How weird is that? I love that.
[00:04:42] Once a year, penguins have a catastrophic molt. And yes, that's the actual technical term in which they spend two or three weeks on land while they lose and replace all their feathers.
[00:04:55] Part of when I was working on Robben island with the penguins that was interesting is when they get to a certain age so they have their little, like, fluffy feathers. They're little doubt feathers that they have when they're babies.
[00:05:11] And they molt it all off and kind of, you know, become adults in an adolescent period. And we call them blue penguins when they're kind of in that molting phase because their color is a little different and they're very fun to see. Like you can actually say, well, that's a penguin becoming an adult, molting all its baby feathers.
[00:05:34] So, yeah, penguin molting is really fun. And their feathers are actually.
[00:05:38] They're very interesting because they are soft and fluffy when they're babies because they're not really going in the water and they're made to keep them warmer. And they're almost like scaly feathers. When they become adults, they're very dense and almost scaly. It's an interesting, like, if you could ever touch a penguin, it's a really interesting feeling.
[00:05:58] The Adelie penguins, I'm not gonna lie, I don't love all penguins. I love most penguins. And Adelie penguins are little monsters. I just, I just don't have the compassion for them that I have for other penguins. I know, that's terrible. Adelie penguins are named after the Adelie Land, in turn named for the wife of French explorer Jules Dumont d' Earl, who discovered the penguins and in 1840. I did not know that.
[00:06:25] If you guys know macaroni penguins, they're the ones that have the crazy little orangey yellow frills on the top of their head. They are named after the flamboyantly dressed group of 18th century aristocrats, the Macaronis.
[00:06:39] Interesting.
[00:06:41] And funny enough, when I was in Argentina, there was a macaroni penguin that got into the colony of Magellanic Penguins and came back every year. He just like thought that was his crew and weirdly enough, would come back every year to nest with the Magellanic Penguins. Despite being a different type of penguin, he was a little confused.
[00:07:04] So it's not quite so clear how the Gentoo penguin got its name, but they did. They do live up to their Latin name, pegasulus brush tail, as they have the most prominent tail of all the penguins, which sweeps side to side as they waddle.
[00:07:23] Because penguins aren't usually a threat when they're on land.
[00:07:26] Wild penguins aren't particularly afraid of tourists in Antarctica. In fact, if you stay still, they'll probably come to investigate you. This is really interesting actually, because there have been studies where I was on Robben island about the penguins and how they interact with or respond to humans.
[00:07:49] And penguins that have absolutely no involvement with humans are just like this, you know, they aren't particularly afraid of people.
[00:07:57] They kind of just are curious or just like, no, you don't bother me, I don't bother you.
[00:08:02] They're not like naturally wired to be afraid of us, but the ones that are hands on, the ones that the scientists are working with, because usually when you're working with a group of penguins, there's, there's a, there's a continual nests that you're always working with. So it's the same penguins, more or less, that you're constantly checking in with. And these penguins also don't have a lot of the fear, despite some of them even being, you know, kind of manhandled from, from babies on. You know, we would collect the babies and weigh them and measure them to make sure that they're healthy and then put them back in their nest. So the ones that have hands on experience with people also don't. They don't like people. I mean, they're not like completely clueless, like, oh, whatever, I'm curious about this person. But they kind of develop this attitude of like, well, you don't bother me, I don't bother you. But if you're gonna come here and bother me, then I'm just gonna accept it. And I know that you're gonna poke and prod me for a minute and then you're gonna leave. So a lot of them are used to being lifted with a stick just to check and see. Okay, do you have eggs under you? All right, you do? And they'll kind of like, some of them will be like, all right, let me just lift up over here and let you do this. Because if I let you do this, I know you're just gonna walk away. And it's like a part of their day. And so they also don't have that fear, per se.
[00:09:25] The ones that are on the sidelines, that are in the nesting colonies that are being observed by scientists.
[00:09:34] Those penguins that don't get poked and prodded, that aren't a part of the study, that see it, are the most nervous and fearful of people.
[00:09:43] So it's interesting, the ones that, like, see people regularly and see them kind of bother other penguins but aren't bothered regularly by people are the ones that tend to have kind of that fear and anxiety of humans. So that's just an interesting observation from a study that was done on Robben island with the penguins that I found interesting.
[00:10:07] Penguins are naturally found almost exclusively in the Southern hemisphere. The exception is the Galapagos penguin, which is endemic to the Galapagos Islands and is the only penguin species found north of the equator.
[00:10:20] Now, again, that doesn't mean there aren't warm weather penguins, because there's penguins, you know, in South Africa, where it's not as cold as you think it would be. And same thing with down in Argentina, where it's, it can get very warm and it can also be very cold. So they're very adaptable down there.
[00:10:37] There's a king penguin at Edinburgh Zoo that was knighted by the King of Norway in 2008. I did not know this, sir Nils Olaf holds the rank of colonel in chief in the Norwegian Guard.
[00:10:53] That's really exciting you guys.
[00:10:56] Emperor penguins are the largest living species of penguins reaching about 4ft tall. That I know. Did you know back in prehistoric times penguins used to be.
[00:11:07] Huh. Here this is. You know what? This is the next fact I got ahead of myself. The now extinct mega penguin, which lived between 37 and 40 million years ago, stood 160 centimeters tall. The average height of a woman in the UK and including beak and flippers would have measured two meters.
[00:11:28] I would be terrified to see a human sized penguin come at me.
[00:11:34] They are little ninjas.
[00:11:37] One of my favorite things that the scientist I was working with on Robben island said about penguins is penguins have four weapons that they're going to use to come after you if you irritate them. There is their beak, their little talons they have on their flippers or on their, their feet, their flippers and the hot fish soup cannon that comes out the back.
[00:12:00] So yep, that's, that's an imagery there.
[00:12:04] I can't imagine all of those weapons materializing in a human sized penguin that is just.
[00:12:12] I would run. I love penguins.
[00:12:14] If I saw a human sized penguin, I would be afraid for my life.
[00:12:20] The smallest penguin is the little blue penguin found in New Zealand and Australia, which is only about 33 cm high.
[00:12:28] Gentoo penguins are the fastest species, swimming up to 22 miles an hour.
[00:12:35] Most penguins only swim between 4 and 7 miles per hour.
[00:12:42] Penguins will mate with the same member of the opposite sex season after season. I think most people know that, but this is really cool.
[00:12:50] They come back to the same nest every year.
[00:12:56] And what's interesting about that is they, they go hibernate elsewhere and the male penguins separate from the female penguins. At least with Magellanic penguins, as they depart for, you know, off season, not mating season, they swim away, spend most of their time in the water and separate out between sex.
[00:13:18] And then they come back, not just to the same mate every season to mate and, you know, raise their little babies together, but they actually come back to the same nest. The fact that they just have this instinctive GPS that tells them where to go when they migrate and where to come back and exactly the nest to go to, that's just crazy to me. I mean, they managed to do it year after year and having eggs and raising their babies is a very mutual effort. It's a partnership.
[00:13:57] They will alternate turns with the Magellanic penguins. Specifically, the male will go for 40 days after the eggs are laid. And sit on the nest. And the women will go next and then spend the next 40 days getting food and then come back. And then they alternate sometimes, depending on the species, daily or every other day, which penguin goes out to sea for food and then comes back. So they're, they're constantly, you know, working together and going back and forth at who's getting the food and who's sitting on the babies until the eggs hatch and then until the babies are old and safe enough to take care of themselves.
[00:14:41] And it's, it's fascinating. I mean, that's how scientists wind up tagging certain penguins or putting GPS cameras on them to follow their, their feeding habits is because, you know, okay, this is the male because it's in the nest today.
[00:14:58] Tomorrow it's going to be the female. And so if you, if you're looking to put a GPS tracker on a penguin, you will mark that penguin and then you'll see it go away. And the next day you'll see, okay, that's the mate that's in the nest because they don't have the mark on them. And then the next day you come back and, okay, there's, there's the original one we marked. So this one, the one we're going to put the GPS tracker on. With the African penguins, you know, there was no real solid way to tell which one was a male or female without doing a blood test or a poop test.
[00:15:31] So we would collect poop samples to tell the genders of the penguins.
[00:15:36] With Magellanic penguins, you could potentially tell by the shape of their skulls. So the males have more of like a protruding head. Like they have a little bumpy on their head between their beak and their forehead, where the females generally don't. And the males tend to be larger. And it's harder to tell when you're seeing them individually. But if you see a mating pair together, it's pretty easy to say, okay, the smaller one is the female, when they're breeding. Penguins are also similarly loyal to their nesting site. Hey, hey, I just said that. It's the next. That's the next fact.
[00:16:15] Often the rookery in which they were born, emperor penguins incubate a single egg each breeding season. I didn't know that. The egg sits on top of their feet under a loose fold of featherless skin, which has a concentration of blood vessels to keep the egg warm.
[00:16:32] Most other penguins build nests of sticks and feathers.
[00:16:36] That's true. I mean, megalodic penguins kind of dig into these little nooks in the deserty kind of landscape. However, they will build some pretty sticks and leaves and things in there to make it feel homey.
[00:16:51] And then they'll steal them from their neighbor's nest if they don't like them. Or if they think that I like that stick better than my stick.
[00:16:59] Most penguin chicks hatch in late December, making January and February the best time to visit Antarctica if you want to see the young.
[00:17:06] That's for Antarctica specifically.
[00:17:09] Although December sounds like about accurate for Patagonian penguins.
[00:17:15] We were working with baby penguins in Robben island in May.
[00:17:22] Penguins have excellent hearing and rely on distinct calls to identify their mates when returning to the crowded breeding grounds.
[00:17:29] If you have never heard a penguin yell before, I think you would be shocked to hear what it sounds like. They kind of sound like a very angry donkey. This sound, it's doesn't sound like it's a bird. It's pretty wild to hear that both penguin parents care for their young. I already said this for several months until the chicks are strong enough to hunt for their own food. The schedule in which they switch off the nest depends upon the species.
[00:18:00] Penguins don't have teeth. I feel like most people know that. They have backward facing fleshy spines that line the inside of their mouth instead, which helps them to gulp down fish.
[00:18:12] During the summer a medium sized penguin will eat about one kilogram of fish, squid, crabs, krill and other seafood each day. But in the winter they eat just a third of that.
[00:18:25] When it comes to choosing a mate, pudgy male penguins with enough fat storage to survive winks of incubation eggs without eating are the most desirable.
[00:18:36] So penguins are chubby chasers.
[00:18:40] Rather than relying on blubber to stay warm in the cold waters in Antarctica. Penguins survive because their feathers trap an insulating layer of warmth next to the skin. So I mentioned their feathers. They are really wild, really puffy and very scaly. If you can ever pet a penguin, please don't do it in the wild. But if you're ever in a like controlled environment like these fun meet penguins experiences from offered by Sanccob usually which Senkob is a lovely organization. They work with a lot of the aquariums out there to bring in African penguins. Usually ones that have been saved from bad situations out in the wild.
[00:19:19] Sometimes they offer hands on experience with penguins. I would definitely suggest doing something like that because it is really a magical experience to get to be close up to a penguin like that.
[00:19:29] It's commonly believed that penguins are black and white for camouflage from above. Because their black backs blend into a dark Ocean, so it's more for protection in the water from below. Their white bellies are hidden against the light coming down from the water surface.
[00:19:46] However, this theory doesn't stand up when penguins are viewed from underwater, as likely predators would still see them. Therefore, other theories for their interesting colors should be considered, including thermoregulation and energy efficiency. But nobody actually really knows for sure.
[00:20:02] And it is interesting to point out that they don't have as many predators on land. Depending on the area, I guess the they live in.
[00:20:12] In South Africa, specifically on Robben island, there are no predators for the penguins. They are safe, which is why there used to be so many penguins breeding there.
[00:20:22] A lot of their predators live in water. Specifically seals love like attacking some penguins.
[00:20:30] So there are more land predators in Patagonia, Jeffrey's cats and other predatory birds. So they're not. Depends on where they're living.
[00:20:43] An adaptive gland, the preen or oil gland, produces a waterproofing oil, which penguins spread across their feathers to help with insulation and reduce friction when they glide through the water.
[00:20:54] If you've never seen a penguin pruning, I highly suggest you watch a video of it. It's adorable.
[00:21:00] So next, all but two species of penguins breed in large colonies of up to several thousand birds.
[00:21:08] It also depends on where they are and what their colonies look like, because like I said, African penguins are pretty close to extinction.
[00:21:16] According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest colony of penguins on Earth is found on Zavotsky island in the South Sandwich Islands of Antarctica, where approximately 2 million chinstrap penguins breed. That is a lot of penguins.
[00:21:34] That's close to the entire, the entire Magellanic penguin population that exists in one place.
[00:21:43] And lastly, scientists can locate large penguin colonies from space just by looking for dark ice patches stained by penguin droppings.
[00:21:53] I'm glad this brought up the feces because. Sorry, guano. Penguin poop is called guano, like bats and yeah, they projectile poop. And when you get a lot of penguins together, there is a lot of guano and they projectile poop across their neighbors, their neighbor's nest. They just in a lot of situations where there are predators, Patagonia is a great example of that.
[00:22:22] They will not stray far from their eggs, slash their little chicklings when they're little babies. So they will waddle out two, three feet from their nest, just turn to the front of it and projectile poop out. They don't go very far. You can tell almost instantly if a nest is being used by a penguin. If the penguin isn't currently in it by the droppings, by the fact that there is just poop sprayed all around it.
[00:22:52] That is, that is a thing they, they projectile poop. And another thing, they, they don't want to stray far from their nest. I mean, it would make sense because like I said, in Patagonia, there are a lot of land predators and there are little armadillos that love baby penguin eggs. So whereas the penguins, the adult penguins might not have predators, as in, you know, armadillos, they do go for the eggs. So they have to stay very close to their little babies, to their eggs.
[00:23:24] And I think that's a good place to end it here. I'm sure I will have more to say about penguins on April 25th, World Penguin Day.
[00:23:35] But again, happy belated Penguin awareness day. Thank you guys so much for tuning into Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I hope I enlightened you on penguins. And then I didn't repeat too much about penguins because I know we've talked about them a little bit before.
[00:23:53] Please visit MallorySadventures.com for more content on the weirdness of our wonderful world.
[00:24:02] And be sure to check out Weird World Adventures on Amazon Prime. Season two is dropping any moment now, so get out there. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Mallory's Adventures and Weird World Adventures, where we will announce season two.
[00:24:21] Thank you so much for tuning in today, everybody. Again, my name is Mallory, and until next time, stay weird.
