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Episode 4260: The emperor penguin who is least afraid of cold, walrus weighs small eyes and long teeth
"Chasing The Wind and Chasing The Culture of Film" public welfare science education article, any form of reprint, please contact the author (WeChat Jumboheritagelist or Huang_Jumbo)
Many animals like to live in a warm environment, but there are also some animals that are not afraid of the cold and love to enjoy the cold environment of the ice and snow in the extremely cold north and south poles, and the animals we are going to introduce today are penguins and walruses.
Penguins belong to the penguin family Spheniscidae and are flightless birds, similar to ostriches.
Penguins live mainly in the southern hemisphere, and there are currently 19 known species of penguins worldwide, and two other species are extinct. Most of them are distributed in the Antarctic region, and the Hambord penguins, Magellan penguins and blackfoot penguins of the genus Penguin are distributed in temperate regions with lower latitudes, while the Distribution of Galapagos penguins is closer to the equator; only the Emperor Penguin and the Adélie Penguin live completely in the polar regions.
Penguins are arguably the least afraid of the cold at the moment. It is covered with feathers and has a thickness of two to three centimeters of subcutaneous fat, and this special thermal insulation structure makes it still able to live freely in the ice and snow.
Once found in the Arctic, the now-extinct great auk may have been as hardy as penguins, and the two were similar in appearance and were once mistakenly associated, so that when puffins were found, Europeans named them the same as penguins.
Penguins share common features with other birds: feathers, a pointed and protruding hard beak, and claws and scaly feet. But unlike other birds, its wings are too short to fly, and unlike other birds that are not good at flying (such as chickens and ostriches), they are not good at running because of their round body. However, penguins have webbing between their toes and their wings have evolved to paddle-shaped. This body structure makes penguins good swimmers.
Penguins on land are either upright or on foot, and because of their round and fat body, they walk slowly and have a cute body. Under the ice and snow, if they are chased by predators, they will stick their abdomen to the ice and use their feet to push quickly to escape. Penguins' natural enemies are sea lions and seals, not walruses, although sea lions, seals and walruses are all huge carnivores.
The patron saint of penguins is the seagull.
Penguins live mainly in the polar, off-the-beaten-path places. Most penguins live in the cold zone, and only a few live in the tropics. Penguins don't like hot weather, and they are only happy in cold climates. So, the most penguins live off the coast of Antarctica.
Penguins do not look like birds, their wings become flippers, their bodies are streamlined, and they can swim briskly in the water. Penguins are covered with a thick layer of anti-hair. Under this layer of feathers there is a softer layer of down feathers to keep warm. In addition, there is a layer of fat under their skin, which also prevents the loss of body temperature. All penguins have similar black and white patterns on them, which make their courtship display more eye-catching.
Penguins forage in the sea, and if necessary, they also dive into the water to feed, and their swimming posture resembles a bird, and the emperor penguin is the penguin that dives the deepest. They can dive to depths of 250 meters to feed and stay below the surface for 20 minutes. Their stomachs are large, and they can eat well far from home and swim home to feed their little babies.
In the sea, the average penguin is already very flexible, and can dive into the water up to 55 meters deep, 22 minutes long, and can swim 6-12 kilometers offshore to hunt krill and so on.
The Emperor Penguin, often referred to simply as the Emperor Penguin or The Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri), is the largest genus in the penguin family, and the adult Emperor Penguin can reach 120 cm tall and weigh up to 46 kg. Before the Emperor Penguin was discovered, there was a penguin that was considered the largest and was named the King Penguin. Later, the Emperor Penguin was found on the coast of the Antarctic Continent and was named the Emperor Penguin because it was taller than the King Penguin.
Between the legs and the abdomen of the emperor penguin there is a blood vessel-covered purple skin hatching plaque, which can keep the eggs at a comfortable 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) in the low temperature of the ambient temperature as low as minus 180 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 117 degrees Celsius), and the light gray and white down feathers on the little emperor penguin can withstand the cold and wind, but are not waterproof, and the waterproof feathers will not grow until they are almost adult, slowly replacing the down feathers on the body, and the down feathers under the body will fall first.
Emperor penguins are social animals. Whenever the harsh climate comes, they will huddle together to protect themselves from the wind and cold. Emperor penguins have a fixed time of activity and appear at night, and there are two main areas of activity for emperor penguins, one is a eating area and the other is a breeding area, and they travel between these two areas all year round. Only from January to March of each year, emperor penguins disperse into the ocean and divide into small flocks for predation.
Emperor penguins can dive 150 to 500 meters underwater, and the deepest dive records can even reach 565 meters. Underwater, they can hold their breath for up to an hour. They swim at a speed of 6 to 9 km/h and can reach a top speed of 20 km/h. One of the most common predation methods is to dive into the water for about 50 meters, and then prey on the surface of the ice floes there to prey on the Antarctic fish (Pagothenioa borchgrevinki) that marches close to the ice surface, usually after six times of predation before surfacing to breathe.
On land, emperor penguins walk on their feet and swagger on the ice, and before the arrival of antarctic winter, adult emperor penguins generally have to walk 50 to 120 kilometers out of the Antarctic ice floes and move to the breeding area to live before the arrival of antarctic winter. In order to resist the cold, the emperor penguin colony often has to move slowly.
Emperor penguins feed mainly on crustaceans, but occasionally on small fish and squid. It is the only penguin that breeds during the winter months in Antarctica. In the wild, emperor penguins generally live about 10 years, and individual life expectancy can reach 20 years.
In the wild, the emperor penguin's main natural enemies include the Antarctic petrels, skuas, leopard-spotted seals, killer whales and great white sharks. In addition, snow dogs and their descendants were also a major predator of emperor penguins before they were cleared from Antarctica.
Emperor penguins generally reach sexual maturity at the age of 5, and when they mature, emperor penguins need to travel 90 kilometers to reach the breeding ground. Every year from March to April, the emperor penguins begin to court, and the temperature has generally dropped to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Emperor penguins have only one companion each year, remain loyal to each other, and breed baby penguins together. But after a year, most emperor penguins change their mates. In May and June, female penguins lay an egg weighing 0.45 kg, at which point their bodies run out of energy and must return to the sea to hunt. During this time, the male penguin places the eggs on the soles of their feet to incubate the egg spots in kept warm, and the incubation time is about 65 days.
During this period, male penguins do not eat, spend most of their time in sleep, and rely on the fat stored in the body to survive. To fend off low temperatures and high winds (up to 200 km/h), the male penguins would huddle together and take turns changing to the periphery. After the baby penguin is born, if the female penguin still does not return, the penguin father will sit the little emperor penguin under him, incubate the egg spots to help the baby penguin keep warm, and then secrete a milky white milky substance from one of the secretory glands in the esophagus to feed the baby penguin. The female penguins return after about 2 months out to sea.
It can find its husband by barking among hundreds of new dads and spitting out food stored in the stomach to feed the little penguins. The male penguin will then leave for food, but he will leave for a shorter time than the female penguin, because the warmer weather will melt a lot of ice and the time on land will be relatively short.
Since then, the two sides have taken turns to take care of the little penguins and forage for food. As the weather gradually warms, baby penguins can also move alone about two months after birth, gathering together for warmth, but they still need to be fed by their parents. Towards the end of the summer in Antarctica, the baby penguins and their parents will return to the sea's predation zone together, and after the summer ends, the penguins that have not reached sexual maturity will remain in the predation zone, while those adult penguins will resume their journey back to the breeding area.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in order to obtain the grease of the emperor penguins, a large number of emperor penguins were slaughtered by humans, and their numbers continued to decline, and it was not until the 1920s that this barbaric slaughter was forced to stop due to strong condemnation by public opinion. By 1964, when the Antarctic Treaty Negotiators developed the Agreed Measures for the Protection of Antarctic Flora and Fauna, the Emperor Penguin and many other Antarctic species were generally protected.
The extant population of emperor penguins is estimated to be around 150,000 to 200,000 pairs, and their populations are relatively stable, and since 2001, the emperor penguins have been in near-threatened protection on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. From 2009 to 2012, a team of researchers from the Australian Antarctic Agency, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the University of Minnesota, the National Science Foundation, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography used aerial photographs to make the analysis of penguin populations originally obtained from the ground more accurate. The survey results show that there are nearly 600,000 people in The Antarctic.
In 2005, French director Luc Jacquet won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for his documentary The Emperor Penguin's Diary of an Emperor Penguin, about the survival and reproduction of emperor penguins.
The king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus), the second largest genus in the penguin family, is about 90 cm tall and weighs 11 to 15 kg, which is only smaller than the emperor penguin. Worldwide, there are about 4 million king penguins, divided into two subspecies (A. p. patagonicus and A. p. halli), the population continues to increase.
The king penguin head was described in 1778 by the English naturalist and illustrator John Frederick Miller, whose scientific name "Aptenodytes" originated in ancient Greek (a means "no", pteno means "feather" or "wing", and dytes means "submerged bird", the full word means "wingless diving bird"), and the secondary word "patagonicus" originates in Patagonia.
King penguins and emperor penguins that are similar to them but slightly larger than them (A. forsteri) is also the two largest penguins in the genus King Penguin.
After talking about penguins, let's talk about walruses again.
The walrus is the only species in the genus Walrus, belonging to the carnivorous walrus family, and is a pinniped. Walrus has several prehistoric genera, but only one genus and one species currently exist.
The walrus has a short and wide beak, and its canine teeth are particularly developed, resembling ivory, hence the name, used for digging food and attacking and defending. It has sparse, hard body hair, small eyes, and poor vision. The limbs are fin-shaped, the hind limbs can be bent forward, and can walk on ice and land.
Walruses are huge, with males weighing an average of 800 to 1,700 kilograms and a length of 2.2 to 3.6 meters, and some walruses can reach 2,000 kilograms. The world's largest male walrus weighs 2,268 kilograms and is 4.9 meters long, making it one of the largest animals that can survive on land besides the blue whale.
Walruses are extremely thick in subcutaneous fat, which can withstand the cold polar environment. Walruses have a different skin color on land than in seawater (brownish-red on land and white in water), because in water, blood vessels shrink cold, squeezing blood out of the subcutaneous fat layer to reduce the loss of heat energy.
Walruses live mainly in the Arctic Ocean, and because they can make excursions, they are found in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Usually live in groups on large ice floes or near the coast.
Walruses are excellent divers. Walruses can dive into the sea at depths of 90 meters and stay in the water for about 20 minutes.
Walruses mainly use fangs to dig crustaceans on the seafloor. At the same time, its sensitive lips and tentacles are also detected and discerned, and when it touches food, it bites through the shell of the crustacean with its teeth and then eats its flesh. Walruses also eat fish, molluscs, plants and even other sea animals (such as narwhals and seals).
Walruses reproduce from April to June, usually giving birth to only one litter. Walruses have few natural predators in nature, and their killings are recorded only in humans, polar bears, and killer whales, and in most cases, polar bears can only eat walruses that fall off cliffs or die of illness, and the skin of walruses is too thick, and polar bears are usually not good at mouthing.
Pinnipeds are animals classified as pinniped suborders, pinniped suborders, or pinnipeds. "Flipper foot" is derived from Latin and means "to have feet like fins". The bodies of this type of animal are spindle-shaped, the limbs are fin-shaped, and they are highly adapted to life in the water.
Pinnipeds originated 30 million years ago in the subarctic region adapted to freshwater lake life in the bear superfamily terrestrial carnivores. Pinnipeds later developed two branches, one with a pinna and a walrus, and the other as a seal without a pinna.
Whether pinnipeds are juxtaposed with carnivores or as suborders under carnivorous has been debated for many years. Pinnipeds do differ in morphology and lifestyle from other carnivores. However, because the earliest fossils of pinnipeds were from the Miocene period, and the other mammals appeared in the Eocene at the latest, this is also the reason why the order Pinniped could not be established.
Because of global warming, the survival of walruses is also facing great challenges, in the wild, there are often walruses weighing several tons of walruses jumping off cliffs one after another to commit suicide, biologists say that human behavior indirectly forced walruses to the road of no return.
On the beaches of Russia, there are often a large number of walruses stacked on the land like mountains, because the sea ice has become less, many walruses do not even have a place to stand, can only climb to the cliff to rest, and when they want to return to the sea to hunt, they often fall off the cliff because of stumbling, becoming a polar bear's plate of food...
Every year on Russia's Yamal Peninsula, herds of walruses huddled crammed around the beach to bask in the sun. It is reported that these walruses "landed" on the Yamal Peninsula at the end of October, which is also home to the world's largest walrus.
Russian scientists recently found a large herd of Atlantic walruses on land for "social activities" on the northern coast of the Kara Sea. Scientists point out that this could be a sign that the walrus population is recovering, which is encouraging.
Located in a remote corner of Russia's Yamal Peninsula, researchers have found more than 3,000 walruses crammed through, compared to just a few dozen Atlantic walruses in recent decades.
According to reports, this behavior of walrus "landing" is called "patting and dragging", which refers to seals, sea lions and walruses temporarily leaving the water and dragging themselves to land or sea ice for reasons such as breeding and rest. This behavior usually occurs during foraging.
Walrus "landings" usually occur on drifting sea ice or Arctic islands, but global warming has reduced sea ice, and walrus habitats are threatened by oil and gas exploration and increased Arctic shipping volumes.
Sokolov, a senior Arctic researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: "This 'landing' phenomenon is unique because there are both female and male walruses, and the age range is also very wide. ”
Sokolov called the discovery a "unique open-air laboratory" that allowed him and his team to analyze thousands of walruses at once. Scientists have taken DNA samples of the walruses and installed satellite trackers on several of them, which will monitor their movements for months.
Andrei Boltunov of the Center for Marine Mammal Research and Expeditions notes that the ice-free season in the Kara Sea has become longer over the decades, and even though there is currently not enough information to conclude whether walrus populations are recovering. But Bortunov said, "We hope it's a good sign."
But sometimes tens of thousands of walruses are crowded on the narrow beach, and once there is a male walrus fight, many small walruses will be directly crushed to death by the nearly two-ton large male walrus...
In addition to Russia, the situation in the United States is not optimistic, in the absence of summer ocean ice, thousands of walruses came to the northwest coast of The United States Alaska, a mile near the village of Inupiaq Eskimo, there were 64 deaths. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Services (USFWS) said all the dead walruses were under the age of one year and were very young baby walruses, and the cause of these deaths has not yet been clarified.
According to the agency's staff, the death of these baby walruses is likely due to a "stampede", which is more likely than the occurrence of disease, because when the walrus is frightened by polar bears, hunters or planes, it is likely to rush into the sea en masse, causing a chaotic stampede. When the elephants frantically rush into the sea, the baby walruses can easily be crushed under their feet, and local residents claim that they did see a plane circling near the coast, causing the entire walrus herd to be frightened.
Jumbo Huang Notes: The emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica. The male and female are similar in plumage and size, reaching 100 cm (39 in) in length and weighing from 22 to 45 kg (49 to 99 lb). Feathers of the head and back are black and sharply delineated from the white belly, pale-yellow breast and bright-yellow ear patches.
Like all penguins it is flightless, with a streamlined body, and wings stiffened and flattened into flippers for a marine habitat. Its diet consists primarily of fish, but also includes crustaceans, such as krill, and cephalopods, such as squid. While hunting, the species can remain submerged around 20 minutes, diving to a depth of 535 m (1,755 ft). It has several adaptations to facilitate this, including an unusually structured haemoglobin to allow it to function at low oxygen levels, solid bones to reduce barotrauma, and the ability to reduce its metabolism and shut down non-essential organ functions.
The only penguin species that breeds during the Antarctic winter, emperor penguins trek 50–120 km (31–75 mi) over the ice to breeding colonies which can contain up to several thousand individuals. The female lays a single egg, which is incubated for just over two months by the male while the female returns to the sea to feed; parents subsequently take turns foraging at sea and caring for their chick in the colony. The lifespan is typically 20 years in the wild, although observations suggest that some individuals may live to 50 years of age.
The walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the family Odobenidae and genus Odobenus. This species is subdivided into two subspecies: the Atlantic walrus (O. r. rosmarus), which lives in the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific walrus (O. r. divergens), which lives in the Pacific Ocean.
Adult walrus are characterised by prominent tusks and whiskers, and their considerable bulk: adult males in the Pacific can weigh more than 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) and, among pinnipeds, are exceeded in size only by the two species of elephant seals. Walruses live mostly in shallow waters above the continental shelves, spending significant amounts of their lives on the sea ice looking for benthic bivalve mollusks to eat. Walruses are relatively long-lived, social animals, and they are considered to be a "keystone species" in the Arctic marine regions.
Episode 4356: Massacre of the Pokatine Forest, Silence of Fallen Leaves in Mass Graves