The Emperor Penguins of Antarctica , the largest of the penguins, take the rules of nature and turn them upside down. They choose the coldest time to breed and it is the females who compete for the males. It’s the male who is hatch the egg.

The females don’t their their they just lay the egg and scurry to the ocean and feed there for two months. This leaves egg hatching to the male who has only his own body fat to live off of throughout this ordeal.. His new offspring to be is in the egg and he must balance this egg the size of a baseball on his feet to give it warmth. He does this through horrendous wintry conditions. Through howling storms; through twenty four hour a day darkness and unbelievable polar winters he balances that egg until it hatches.

How does he do it? For one thing he has on his body approximately 80 feathers per square inch. Long feathers overlap one another so those fierce winds can’t enter. If the egg does not fall from its nesting place which is on his feet and other factors are favorable the egg will hatch which happens 90% of the time. After 65 days of this with a loss of a third to half his body weight the chick is born. We know his patience has worn thin because as he sees the new mom arrive to take over her duties of feeding the new chick, the male can be heard trumpeting to her for relief.

Dad and mom can identify one another because during their courtship they learned the unique sounds they make that distinguishes them from all the other 11,000 penguins in Antarctica.

Summer comes to Antarctica in December and the chicks now must leave the warmth of their parents and strike out to the sea because there is only a short period when the climate is milder and the food is readily available.

To do this, these little emperors line up on an ice cliff and the ones at the edge dive to the sea. More than half of these chicks won’t survive either because of starvation or predators such as the leopard seals who make them their next meal. If they survive to adulthood they could live for 20 or more years.