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Like other birds, penguins don't have teeth.

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Penguins don’t wear tuxedos to make a fashion statement: it helps them be camouflaged while swimming. From above, their black backs blend into the dark ocean water and, from below, their white bellies match the bright surface lit by sunlight. This helps them avoid predators, such as leopard seals, and hunt for fish unseen.

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Penguin's bodies are built for swimming with their average speed in the water being about 15 mph.

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Most penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere.

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Penguins are flightless birds.

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The Emperor Penguin is the largest species of penguins at 45 in. tall.

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Different heights of penguins

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Macaroni Penguin

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0u67Wk_hJ0

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Go to this website to learn more:

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Interesting Penguin Facts

Learning various facts is a great way to expand your knowledge. It can also fuel your interest to learn more about specific species of penguins or certain aspects of their lives.

- All penguin species live in the southern hemisphere, from the Galapagos Islands to the Antarctic continent. None in the wild lives in the North Pole.

- The only penguin that can cross the equator towards the northern hemisphere is the Galapagos penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus).

- A colony of penguins can have about 20 million individuals during the year.

- Penguins are birds, but they are unable to fly.

- Their bones are denser than those of flying birds; this allows them to float and plunge to moderate depths at will.

- Usually, penguins return to the same place every year to nest.

- All penguins feed on the sea. Their favorite foods are fish, squid, and krill.

- The name of the Adélie penguin or Adelaide penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) is in honor of the wife of Jules Dumont d'Urville, the explorer that discovered it.

- The largest species is the Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) with a height up to 1.2 meters.

- Most penguins can swim at 8-9 kilometers per hour or 2 meters per second.

- Some prehistoric penguins were much bigger than the modern ones; they had a height larger than 1.5 meters and weighed about 91 kilograms.

- Penguins do not have teeth. Instead, their tongue and throat have spiny structures that prevent food from slipping out of their mouth.

- Some species can live up to 15-20 years in the wild. In captivity, their life expectancy is a little higher.

- Each penguin has a unique voice, and that's why they can recognize each other.

- They are carnivorous animals. The first meal of an emperor penguin chick is a kind of porridge produced by the male throat glands.

- Penguins can drink salt water because they have special glands that drain the liquid out of the nose and expel the salt.

- They probably descend from flying birds, but as they relied more on the ocean resources and evolved, they lost their ability to fly. At least it's a hypothesis.

- All penguins spend about 75-80 percent of their life at sea, but they mate and nest on land.

- Some penguins can jump from the water to the shore up to 1.8 meters height.

- Guano, or penguin droppings, varies in color depending on what they eat. For example, if they eat krill, it has a pinkish color! But if they eat fish, it is white.

- The only species living permanently in the Antarctica are the Emperor Penguin and the Adelie Penguin.

- In average, penguins can submerge to about 100 meters, but this can vary. For example, the emperor penguin reaches up to 500 meters deep.

- The largest penguin species that has existed was the Anthropornis nordenskjoldi, which had a height about 1.7-1.8 meters.

- Elizabethan penguins are not albino but suffer from a genetic mutation that causes the feathers to become pale or white, so their melanin level is very low.

- Penguins are serially monogamous; they only have one partner per reproductive season. The emperor penguin is monogamous throughout its life.

- In some species, when a male courts a female, it usually offers rocks as a gift.

- Centuries ago, it was common that sailors killed penguins to consume their meat and obtain oil.

- Besides the Emperor Penguin ( Aptenodytes forsteri) and the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus), which lay only one egg, all other penguin species lay two eggs.

- Adults change their plumage at least once a year.

Facts on Video
Sources:
https://seaworld.org/en/animal-info/animal-infobooks/penguin

Animals, a visual encyclopedia. Second edition. Smithsonian 2012.

World of Animals Magazine. Issue 04. Imagine publishing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin

Spences David, Lloyd. Penguins. Smithsonian.2007.

Lynch, Wayne. Penguins of the world. Firefly. 2007.
BioExpedition Publishing © 2017.

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Learning various facts is a great way to expand your knowledge. It can also fuel your interest to learn more about specific species of penguins or certain aspects of their lives. - All penguin species live in the southern hemisphere, from the Galapagos Islands to the Antarctic continent.