40 Fun Facts About Adelie Penguin

Adélie penguins are notorious thieves at breeding time, sneaking what from neighbours' nests to build up their own?

Stones piled into a mound lift the eggs clear of meltwater, so every one is worth stealing. A study of 450 nests near Casey station found that pairs with more of them raised more chicks.

The Adélie penguin is named for Adèle, who was what to the explorer whose crew discovered the species?

His wife, Adèle, first gave her name to a stretch of Antarctic coast that Jules Dumont d'Urville sighted in 1840. The penguins collected there were then named after the place.

Scientists counting Adélie penguins from space scan satellite images of bare coast for red-brown stains left by what?

Droppings, known as guano, stain a colony's ground so strongly that it shows up from orbit. A 2014 count using this trick found 3.79 million breeding pairs in 251 colonies.

Which powerful predator patrols the ice edge and is the main hunter of adult Adélie penguins in the water?

Leopard seal ambushes near the ice edge are the main threat to adults, so Adélies swim in groups for safety. Polar bears, often pictured beside penguins, live only in the Arctic.

When snow lies deep enough, Adélie penguins save energy by doing what instead of walking upright?

Sliding on their bellies, known as tobogganing, lets them cover ground quickly for less effort than a waddle. Walking upright, they average only about 2.5 km/h across the ice.

Disneynature's 2019 film Penguins follows the first breeding season of an Adélie penguin given which everyday name?

Steve is a first-time dad whose hunt for a partner and a patch of ground drives the film, narrated by Ed Helms. His partner in the story is called Adeline.

Which animated film features five small, fast-talking Adélie penguins known as the Amigos, led by the confident Ramón?

Happy Feet won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, with Robin Williams voicing Ramón. The Amigos cheer the hero's dancing when his own colony only mocks it.

Some Adélie penguins trek about 13,000 km a year, following the moving edge of the sea ice to stay near what?

Sunlight vanishes for months near the pole in winter, so the birds drift north with the ice edge to where day still breaks. The longest tracked round trip covered 17,600 km.

Only two penguins count as truly native to the Antarctic continent itself: the Adélie and which far larger species?

Emperor colonies breed on sea ice in the depths of winter, while Adélies arrive for the brief summer. Kings and macaronis keep to milder shores farther north.

Who keeps the two eggs in an Adélie penguin nest warm during the month or so before they hatch?

Mother and father in turn sit for shifts of up to two weeks while the other feeds at sea. The sitter eats nothing and will not leave even to relieve itself.

Which brown seabirds haunt Adélie penguin colonies, snatching unguarded eggs and small chicks?

Skuas kill many chicks and take eggs, mostly those left unguarded or stuck at the edge of a group. Cape Crozier hosts a vast Adélie colony and about 1,000 pairs of the raiders.

What name do biologists give the tight groups of Adélie penguin chicks left alone while both parents hunt at sea?

Crèches form once chicks are about three weeks old, which frees both parents to fetch food at the same time. Huddling together keeps the youngsters warm and safer from predators.

What job does an Adélie penguin's black back and white front do while the bird is swimming?

Camouflage is the point: seen from below, a white front blends with the bright surface, and from above a black back vanishes into dark water. The pattern is called countershading.

Because Adélie penguins need both sea ice and bare ground, scientists treat their numbers as an early warning of what?

Climate change shows up fast in their colonies: on the warming Antarctic Peninsula numbers have fallen since the 1980s, while colonies in colder East Antarctica have grown.

Jules Dumont d'Urville, whose expedition collected the first Adélie penguins around 1840, was sailing for which country?

France still claims the slice of Antarctica he named Adélie Land and runs a research station there that bears his name. Adélies breed on the rocks around the base every summer.

Unusually long, stiff feathers on which body part earned Adélie penguins and their closest relatives a shared nickname?

The tail feathers sweep the ground as the bird walks, which is why Adélies and their closest relatives are known as brush-tailed penguins.

Adélie penguins fire their poo clear of the nest; a study of the pressure penguins need for this won which spoof award?

Ig Nobel Prize judges gave the physics paper their 2005 award for fluid dynamics. A bird sitting on eggs will not leave the nest even for this, so it aims outward instead.

In 2018 scientists revealed a previously unknown colony of 1.5 million Adélie penguins on which remote island group?

Danger Islands earned the name in 1842, when floating ice hid them until a ship was almost upon them. The penguin count there was made with drones adapted to the cold.

The world's southernmost Adélie penguin colony sits at Cape Royds, beside a hut built in 1908 by which explorer?

Ernest Shackleton and his party lived in the hut through the winter of 1908, and it is still preserved. The cape is protected partly for its long record of penguin counts.

Which marking, missing in birds under a year old, sets an adult Adélie penguin apart from every other penguin?

White eye rings are the adult's trademark, circling a dark iris on an otherwise all-black head. The beak looks short and stubby because feathers hide most of it.

How does an Adélie penguin parent deliver a meal of krill to its chick after a long hunting trip at sea?

Regurgitated directly into the chick's open beak, each meal weighs about 300 to 650 grams. A well-fed chick can put on around 80 grams a day.

How do Adélie penguins get from the sea onto an ice ledge that stands taller than they are?

By leaping straight out, as high as 3 metres into the air, they land on the ice in one move. Underwater they usually cruise at about 8 km/h.

If both birds survive the winter, an Adélie penguin returning to its old nest usually pairs up again with whom?

The same mate is found again by voice: each pair recognises the other's call and the nest site they shared.

What covers an Adélie penguin's tongue, helping the toothless bird grip slippery krill before swallowing it whole?

Tiny spines on the tongue, backed by powerful jaws, stop prey slipping back out. Penguins catch food in the bill and swallow it whole while still swimming.

Adélie penguins raise their young in the Antarctic summer, so in which month do most of their chicks hatch?

December is when most chicks hatch: the eggs are laid in November and take about five weeks. By February the young birds are ready to go to sea.

Which orange-billed penguin with a white band over its head belongs to the same genus as the Adélie?

Gentoo penguins are close cousins of the Adélie but cope less well with ice. As the Antarctic Peninsula warms, they are spreading south while Adélies there retreat.

What ran aground in Commonwealth Bay, forcing Cape Denison's Adélie penguins to walk about 65 km to reach the sea?

An iceberg named B09B stranded there, and sea ice built up between it and the shore. Far fewer birds returned to breed, though Adélies elsewhere in Antarctica were unaffected.

Adélie penguins were found to deliberately hunt which soft-bodied animals, once thought swallowed only by accident?

Jellyfish turned out to be a snack the birds seek out, not a mistake. Little, yellow-eyed and Magellanic penguins showed the same taste for them.

Each spring, which Adélie penguins reach the breeding colony first to reclaim and defend last year's nest site?

The males arrive first and court with a salute, standing at full height with neck arched and beak thrusting. The same display tells rivals the territory is taken.

George Murray Levick spent a whole summer among Adélie penguins as zoologist on which explorer's final expedition?

Robert Falcon Scott took Levick south on the Terra Nova, and Levick's summer at Cape Adare in 1911–12 became the book Antarctic Penguins. He then survived a winter stranded in a cramped ice cave.

Adélie penguins swallow seawater with every catch, so where does the extra salt leave the body as a drip of brine?

From the nostrils: a gland above each eye filters salt out of the blood, and the brine runs out and drips off like a runny nose. It lets penguins live with no fresh water to drink.

BBC cameras filmed a lone Adélie penguin charging which large seabird to shield a group of another species' chicks?

Giant petrel attacks can kill a chick, yet the far smaller Adélie charged and then stood between the predator and the youngsters until it retreated. The scene is from Spy in the Snow.

What colour is the bare skin on an adult Adélie penguin's legs, in contrast to its black-and-white plumage?

Pink legs are among the few unfeathered parts of the bird. Even the beak is covered in feathers almost to its tip.

Australian researchers measure the meals wild Adélie penguins bring home by placing what on the path up from the sea?

A weighing platform logs each tagged bird on its way out and back, so the difference reveals how much food reached the chick. Nobody has to handle the penguin.

What colour is typically the first coat of fluffy down on a newly hatched Adélie penguin chick?

Silvery-grey down lasts only about ten days before a second, darker coat replaces it. The chick is seven to nine weeks old before it has the plumage it needs to go to sea.

About a third of the world's Adélie penguins breed around which Antarctic sea, named after a British naval explorer?

Ross Sea colonies hold about 34% of all Adélies, some 1.29 million pairs. Around a quarter of a million of those pairs nest at Cape Adare alone.

Hombron and Jacquinot, who first described the Adélie penguin for science in 1841, held which job on the voyage?

Surgeons on the expedition doubled as its naturalists, and this pair named the new bird after the stretch of coast where the specimens were collected.

Scientists traced 38,000 years of Adélie penguin diets through the chemistry of what, left buried in old colonies?

Eggshell fragments show a sudden switch from fish to krill about 200 years ago, probably because the hunting of whales and other krill-eaters left far more for the penguins.

Adélie penguins usually hunt in the upper 70 m of the sea, but about how deep can their deepest dives go?

175 metres is far below where the birds normally feed. Parents with chicks swim up to 120 km offshore, on hunting trips that last anywhere from 5 to 72 hours.

A young Adélie penguin's white throat means it is most easily mistaken for which close relative?

Chinstrap penguins wear a thin black line under the head that the young Adélie lacks. The Adélie's black face also reaches below its eyes.