A species
Emperor penguin
Aptenodytes forsteri
The father who keeps an egg warm on his feet all winter.
You and the emperor penguin last shared an ancestor about 320 million years ago (on 4 December, if life's history were one year).
Imagine standing out in the freezing cold all winter with an egg on your feet and no dinner. That is what a father emperor penguin does. After the mother lays one egg, she travels to the sea to feed. The father stays behind and balances the egg on his feet under warm feathers for about two months without eating.
It may look very different from its distant cousins, but this waddling bird is a distant relative of the barn owl and the hummingbird beside it on the tree. It cannot fly. Its wings have become stiff flippers for swimming. They are black above and white below, and its dark back and white belly help it hide in the sea. It is the largest living penguin, about as tall as a six-year-old child.
They are the only birds that breed in the deep Antarctic winter, right on the ice. The fathers huddle in big groups to keep warm. When parents can reach the sea, they dive to catch fish, squid and krill.
A giant from long ago
An extinct Antarctic penguin from about 40 million years ago grew about 2 metres long, much bigger than today's emperors.
A long life
On average they live about 15 to 20 years in the wild.
A bad year for ice
After record-low sea ice in 2022, four out of five colonies checked in one part of Antarctica lost all their chicks, with more than 9,000 thought to have died.