Talk:Emperor Penguin
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Why do they travel so far inland to raise their young? -Drue 17:11, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- My understanding from watching March_of_the_Penguins is that they walk all the way to where the ice is the thickest and will not melt with the onset of summer. I remember it being mentioned in the narration that during the summer the ocean is within a few hundred yards of their nesting area. --Chipmunk 03:36, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Is it the male or the male and female that have a brood pouch?
- According to "March of the Penguins", both the male and the female have a pouch. The egg will be passed from the female (shortly after it is hatched (laid, surely!) ) to the male (who will incubate it). The chick will then live in the brood pouch of the male until the female returns with food. The chick will then be transfered to the female.
- That movie also asserts that Emperor Penguins mate once a season but each year their mate may change, contradicting the "penguins mate for life" notion. Maybe it's just a movie, but I'm curious who is correct. --feitclub July 5, 2005 21:49 (UTC)
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- The research article "Why do aptenodytes penguins have high divorce rates?" indicates that only a small proportion of emperor penguins return to the same mate as last year. 68.164.110.144
[edit] Baby penguin image removed
The article originally contained this image from the movie March of the Penguins. I removed it as a copyvio. Using that image to illustrate an article about the movie is fair use but using it in this article is not. — mendel ☎ 04:40, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Lifespan and lifestyle
The March of the Penguins article says that penguins come of breeding age at 5 years old. How long do they live? And what's the annual cycle of the chicks till they turn 5? - Gyan 02:15:57, 2005-09-10 (UTC)
[edit] How tall is the Emperor Penguin?
At the beggining it says "between 1.27 and 1.6m", but in Physical Characteristics it says "adults average 0.75m"
Additionally, www.emperor-penguin.com lists their height as "about 115cm".
[edit] English units
I added English units to various parts of the article. I'm not a big fan of the antiquated system of measurement, but the fact is that a large part of the English-speaking world understands "1 pound" much better than "450 grams." (Besides which: where does the suspiciously non-round "450 grams" number for the egg weight come from? I bet someone read that the egg was a pound and thus translated it into 450 g.)--RattBoy 15:44, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
- I disagree with this. The majority of the world now uses the metric system, including much of the English speaking world. There are only three holdout countries left on the entire planet: United States of America, Liberia, and Myanmar.[1] Although I am from the United States myself, I have no problem with metric units. I believe your assertion that "a large part" of English speakers can't understand what 450 g means, is incorrect. The article also looks awkward with every unit of measure (weight of penguin, height of penguin, etc.) having both kinds of units. =Axlq 16:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Breeding Site
Is there a single breeding site for the whole Emperor Penguin population every year, or many?
- That's what I wondered - in fact it's why I came to the wikipedia article. From the narration of the film it would seem there's only one, but as there are supposed to be between 150,000-200,000 breeding pairs (and nowhere near that many in the film) I'm guessing there are many sites. sheridan 05:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
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- The linked Emperor Penguin website says "Over forty colonies are known, ranging in size from less than 200 pairs in the Dion Islands to over 50,000 pairs on Coulman Island." Perhaps this fact should be reflected somewhere in the article.--RattBoy 23:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
THANK YOU
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- The MotP DVD has extra features including a "making of" (which features a couple of French film crew on the ice for most of a year, filming the penguins near the Dumont d'Urville permanent research station) and a National Geographic "Critter Camera" feature on filming diving penguins near the US McMurdo research station. The two locations are about 1000 miles (1600km for RattBoy) apart. It's not clear if the underwater footage in the main MotP film is from the French or the NatGeog teams - I'd suspect the latter, because 2 people is a small team for filming underwater in the tropics, let alone on Antarctic pack ice.
- I added a "see also" for the features on the DVD - but as noted below, there are probably ink-on-paper articles from the same source which would be better citations.
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[edit] Antarctic breeding
"It is the only penguin that breeds during the winter in Antarctica." What about the King Penguin? GrahamBould 12:45, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
- Good question. According to our article at King Penguin, it lives (and presumably breeds) on subantarctic islands and temperate islands. I can't find anywhere where we currently list the subantarctic islands, or otherwise define what makes an island subantarctic rather than antarctic, but I think the point the article is making is that only the Emperor Penguin winters and breeds on mainland Antarctica, and it may well be that no other penguin breeds anywhere in Antarctica, mainland or not. Mind you, the sea ice shelf is only land of any sort by a fairly loose definition.
- Some clarification would be good of many points here. Andrewa 20:18, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Diving behavior
The information on the diving behavior appears to come from one of the National Geographic's additional features on the March of the Penguins DVD. It's under the title of "Crittercam: Emperor Penguin". Probably there was a ink-on-paper article based on the same work. 83.104.55.73 21:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Removed cite needed
After some difficulty finding it, I've removed a citation needed tag from the following paragraph:
These penguins can dive 150 to 250 meters (490-820 feet) into the Southern Ocean. They can venture deeper, the deepest diving on record being 565 m (1870 ft). The longest they can hold their breath when underwater is 20 minutes. Their swimming speed is 6 km to 9 km per hour (4-6 mph), but they can achieve up to 19 km per hour (12 mph) in short bursts. One of their feeding strategies is to dive to about 50 meters, where they can easily spot sub-ice fish Pagothenia borchgrevinki swimming against the under surface of the sea-ice, which they then catch, dive again and repeat the sequence about half a dozen times before surfacing to breathe.
This information is supported by the Crittercam short included with the March of the Penguins DVD, which was already listed under Further reading.
If anyone wants to make it a specific citation, feel free. But it would be a bit out of place IMO. Most of the information in the article doesn't have explicit references at this level. Some articles in Wikipedia do have an explicit reference for every factoid, and I think it looks appalling! Most do not. Other encyclopedias do not. But anway, that's a citation if anyone wants to include it, and the justification for removing the cite needed tag. It removes this excellent article from Category:Articles with unsourced statements, where it was a bit out of place. Andrewa 20:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
