Galápagos Album: Of course there are penguins at the equator!

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Most of your penguins are from warm regions. I worked with penguins for 4 years and they ARE NOT HAPPY FEET!!!! Smelly little slapping, snapping critters. Instaed of a valet train one as a guard dog. Other than that they were great to work with!

Of course it's a penguin. It doesn't look a bit like a feckin' nun.

By Richard Harris (not verified) on 17 Sep 2008 #permalink

I want one as my merkin.

Most of your penguins are from warm regions.

Most species, but I don't know if that's true for total numbers of individuals.

That's areas with warm air temperatures, by the way, not warm water temperatures. Penguins are found where water is cold.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

One penguin but rather a lot of crabs (one looking as though it had very boggly eyes).

Would it be blasphemy to nominate God for a Molly?

I once heard a very funny, but probably apocryphal, penguin story. It seems this guy was studying penguins (in Antarctica), and specifically was studying the ticks and lice that live on them.

Very difficult to collect ticks from a penguin. In fact, the easiest way of doing so is to get a trash bag, put some flea powder in it, drop a penguin in, and shake for about a minute. Then you take your penguin out and let it go. Obviously, the penguins were not too pleased by this process. The released penguin would stand there in shock for a while, then waddle furiously after the perpetrator of this indignity. So eventually this guy wound up with a horde of a hundred angry penguins surrounding his tent/trailer/whatever, warking day and night.

By Craig Helfgott (not verified) on 17 Sep 2008 #permalink

@ Darth Wader

Of course he did. Look at it, those cephalopod-biting jaws would make anyone scream in terr...

Awwwwwwwww

Is it lost??

anyone recall what the current theory is as to why penguins aren't found in the Arctic?

Until quite recently, the Arctic had its own very penguin-like denizen, the Great Auk.

By Sven DiMilo (not verified) on 17 Sep 2008 #permalink

anyone recall what the current theory is as to why penguins aren't found in the Arctic?

Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! It's because God is tilting the earth!

Until quite recently, the Arctic had its own very penguin-like denizen, the Great Auk.

I used to be one of those. It's true. I was a Great Auk in a school play at the age of 8 or so.

#19
Psh... don't be dense. Its because when Noah was dropping all the different species in the different continents he ran out of penguins before he got to the arctic. The arctic was the last stop. Thats why polar bears are white, they just got pale from too much time below deck.

In accordance with Poe's Law I am adding this happy face so yall know I am joking :-)

Ichthyic said:

anyone recall what the current theory is as to why penguins aren't found in the Arctic?

IIRC current thinking suggests that it would be rather hard for large flightless birds to avoid ending up inside a hungry Polar Bear for very long so, although there are several arctic bird species that fill the same niche as penguins do, all of them have retained the ability to fly.

Basic biogeography however has not stopped the Norwegian army from adopting and recently knighting one that currently resides at Edinburgh Zoo.

By Lilly de Lure (not verified) on 18 Sep 2008 #permalink

Would it be horribly wrong to start a collection to get the North Pole populated with penguins?

I thought Michelle said "lost" because it's all alone.

Did not the Great Auks once essentially occupy the penguin niche in the arctic, polar bears notwithstanding?

Which is to say that if a population of penguins managed to migrate to the arctic, or were transplanted there by some mad ecologist, would they not have at least some chance of successfully establishing themselves there?

Darth Wader @ 12,

"So a comic book writer saw one of these and thought to himself "now theres a menacing archenemy"

You actually think Opus is a manacing archenemy?

Frank Zappa comes to mind somehow

"Like a Penguin in bondage.
BOING!"