Penguin pictures and history

Penguins (order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers. Most penguins feed on krill, fish, squid, and other forms of sealife caught while swimming underwater. They spend about half of their lives on land and half in the oceans.

These were not restricted to Antarctic regions; on the contrary, subantarctic regions harboured high diversity, and at least one giant penguin occurred in a region not quite 2,000 km south of the equator 35 mya, in a climate decidedly warmer than today.

as some sources suggest.
A third theory states that the word is an alteration of “pen-wing”, with reference to the rudimentary wings of great auks. This has been criticised for the unexplained nature of the alteration of the word.

Penguins for the most part breed in large colonies, the exceptions being the Yellow-eyed and Fiordland species; these colonies may range in size from as few as a 100 pairs for Gentoo Penguins, to several hundred thousand in the case of King, Macaroni and Chinstrap Penguins.


Penguins generally only lay one brood; the exception is the Little Penguin, which can raise two or three broods in a season.

Penguin eggs are smaller than any other bird species when compared proportionally to the weight of the parent birds; at 52 g (2 oz), the Little Penguin egg is 4.7% of its mothers' weight, and the 450 g (1 lb) Emperor Penguin egg is 2.3%.[49] The relatively thick shell forms between 10 and 16 % of the weight of a penguin egg, presumably to minimise risk of breakage in an adverse nesting environment. The yolk, too, is large, and comprises 22–31 % of the egg. Some yolk often remains when a chick is born, and is thought to help sustain it if parents are delayed in returning with food.