The Life of an Emperor

The Life Cycle of an Emperor Penguin

I've received lots of questions about the emperor penguins so here is some information about them and what they are doing on the runway road.

The life cycle diagram above is helpful in understanding what emperors do on an annual basis. The ones pictured in the previous blog are about 30 to 40 miles away from the open water and have wandered to this spot in order to molt. This stage isn't depicted in the diagram but occurs some time in late January/February.

During molting, emperors develop a completely new set of feathers, which push out the old feathers. The new feathers grow to one-third their length before the old feathers are pushed out in order to keep the critters from having no insulation. Emperors have the most feathers per square inch of any bird (up to 100) which gives them superb insulation. During the molting process, the penguins cannot be in the water so they find a spot somewhere safe on land and do not eat during the 34 day process. The only nourishment that the emperors get during this time is a small amount of water extracting from the snow that they eat.

To give you sense of size, these emperors are the largest variety of penguin. They can be as tall as 3.7 feet (1.1 meters) and weigh between 60 and 90 pounds (27 - 41 kilograms).

Once the emperors have a complete set of new feathers, they will waddle slowly back to the ice edge and feed in the ocean until April, when the cycle begins anew.

Since they are so irresistible, here are some close-ups taken by Michiel on Saturday night.