Will the emperor penguin on the "ice floe" be the next to "disappear"?

On the subantarctic islands, there is a kind of penguin that has long been considered the largest penguin in the world, called the king penguin. Later, people discovered a larger penguin on the coast of the Antarctic continent that was a head taller than the king penguin, so they named it the emperor penguin. This is how the emperor penguin got its name.

Emperor penguins are the largest penguins alive today, with a body length of more than 1.2 meters and a weight of 40 kilograms. Emperor penguins are simple and generous, and very funny. When people approach, they do not run away. Sometimes they seem to be indifferent; sometimes they seem to be shy and at a loss; sometimes they look around, whisper to each other, and chirp. That simple and silly look is really funny. Maybe they rarely see people, so they are curious.

Emperor penguins wear a black and white dress, with a reddish-orange beak and a patch of orange-yellow feathers under their necks, which gradually fade downwards and are darkest behind their ears. The color of their entire bodies is harmonious. Emperor penguins like to live in groups, with a group of at least a few hundred, a thousand, or even tens of thousands. Tens of thousands of emperor penguins gather together, which is very lively and orderly. Sometimes, they line up in neat rows, facing one direction, like a well-trained honor guard, waiting and welcoming visitors from afar; sometimes they line up in square formations with equal distances and intervals, like athletes performing group gymnastics, with a very neat and spectacular formation.

The golden sun illuminates the blue "palace" magnificently. The emperor penguins are like subjects of a mysterious country, wearing all-black tuxedos and silver-white shirts and trousers, with a golden red bow tie around their necks. They are full of energy, behave calmly, and have a gentlemanly demeanor. Emperor penguins breed in the cold environment of -40 degrees Celsius in Antarctica, and their living environment is very harsh. Many of the breeding sites are nearly 100 kilometers away from the sea. In the strong wind and severe cold, they slide on the ice to the breeding site.

The courtship method of emperor penguins is very special. The male emperor penguin walks unsteadily and makes calls to attract the attention of the female emperor penguin. After a period of twists and turns in love life, the congenial partner is chosen and the breeding ground is found. The female emperor penguin carries eggs for about 2 months and starts laying eggs in May. The female emperor penguin lays one egg each time. The egg is light green and shaped like a duck egg, but it is much larger than a duck egg and weighs about 500 grams. After the female emperor penguin lays the egg, it gives the egg to the male emperor penguin. From then on, the female emperor penguin's reproductive mission came to an end. After a day or two, the female emperor penguin left the warm family with confidence and ran to the sea to find food, play and have fun. Because it did not eat for more than a month during pregnancy, the mental and physical exhaustion was very serious.

For male emperor penguins, hatching eggs is indeed a difficult task. Because the reproductive season of emperor penguins is in the winter of Antarctica, the climate is extremely cold, with wind and snow. The reason why the muscles of male emperor penguins can still regularly control the incubation temperature in the extreme cold of -40℃ is that they have their own unique methods. First, during the incubation period, in order to avoid the cold and wind, male emperor penguins often stand side by side, with their backs facing the wind to form a windproof wall. Secondly, male emperor penguins use their mouths to move the eggs to their feet, so that the eggs will not directly contact the cold ground. But this is not enough, it also covers the eggs with its fat belly to incubate. During the incubation period, the hair on the lower abdomen of male emperor penguins will fall off in a triangular shape, exposing the skin. This is called the incubation spot, which is also a common physical change of parent birds in general birds. But the male emperor penguins have thick down, so it just forms a triangular room with feather "walls". The exposed skin is also heavily wrinkled, and a large part of the egg is wrapped in the wrinkles, because there are many blood vessels on the surface of the skin, forming a warm "wall". The male emperor penguin completely wraps the egg in this room in the belly, so that the egg is tightly attached to the "wall" to incubate. In this way, the egg will not get cold even in cold climates. This is really a clever method. From then on, the male emperor penguin bent his neck, lowered his head, stood for more than 60 days without eating or drinking, and took on the responsibility of incubating the eggs, relying on consuming his own fat to maintain physical strength.

Emperor penguins choose the Antarctic winter as their reproductive period because there are fewer enemies in winter, which can increase the reproduction rate. At the same time, when the young emperor penguins grow up to be able to move and forage independently, the Antarctic summer has arrived, and the young emperor penguins can leave their parents and live a self-reliant life. This is also the result of the emperor penguins adapting to the Antarctic environment.

It is difficult for male emperor penguins to achieve a 100% hatching rate when incubating eggs. This is not because male emperor penguins lack experience and poor skills in incubating eggs, but mainly due to the harsh Antarctic climate. There are two climate factors that cause disasters, one is wind and the other is snow. If emperor penguins encounter a strong storm of 50 meters per second when incubating eggs, they will be difficult to resist, even if a windproof wall is built. It can be imagined that a strong storm can blow away tents, roll away airplanes, move buildings, and throw objects weighing one or two hundred kilograms into the air, not to mention the small emperor penguins! When encountering such a natural disaster, the goose can only turn over and the eggs break, and the lucky ones can escape. Especially in snowstorms, that is, the strong snow flow set off by the storm, roaring, roaring, galloping, and rushing around to attack everything. The male emperor penguins incubating eggs are either swept away or buried in the snow, and there are only a handful of survivors.

Since the female emperor penguin left her husband, she has played enough, eaten enough, and drunk enough in the ocean near the coast. The loss during the egg-carrying period has also been compensated, so she embarks on the road back to her old home to find her long-lost husband and newborn child. Among tens of thousands of emperor penguins, female emperor penguins can accurately identify their husbands and children through their calls. It takes about 2 months for female emperor penguins to hunt and return to the nest. During this period, male emperor penguins will not eat anything and will always hold their eggs. If we count from the time when the male emperor penguin leaves the ocean, it can sometimes be as long as 4 months. Before the female emperor penguin returns, the male emperor penguin is responsible for incubating the eggs and taking on the task of raising the offspring. The infant stage of the newborn emperor penguin is spent on the instep of the male emperor penguin and beside him. The male emperor penguin is both a father and a keeper. Although the newborn emperor penguin does not look very good, with grayish-yellow fur all over its body, a pair of small eyes with inner circles, and a crooked walk, the male emperor penguin still loves it very much. After the baby emperor penguin is born, it sometimes cries out of hunger. Although it has fasted for a long time during the incubation period, the male emperor penguin can still secrete a solid substance from its esophagus to feed the baby emperor penguin before its partner returns.

With biological instinct and the unique magnetic positioning and direction-finding function of birds, the female emperor penguin accurately returned to the habitat where she gave birth to her children and found her husband and children. At this moment, the first gift the female emperor penguin gave her child was a delicious meal. When the little emperor penguin saw its mother, it instinctively opened its mouth. The female emperor penguin then put its mouth into the little emperor penguin's mouth and spit out mouthfuls of juicy food from its crop. This was the first full meal since the little emperor penguin was born, and it was also the first time it enjoyed maternal love. During the whole process, the male emperor penguin lost at least 40% of his weight. At this time, he was exhausted and looked very thin. He handed the little emperor penguin to his wife and also traveled a long distance to the sea to find food.

About three months after the birth of the young emperor penguins, the Antarctic summer arrives, and they follow their parents into the sea to forage and swim. When the midsummer in the Antarctic arrives, they have grown plump feathers and are full of energy, so they leave their parents and begin to live an independent life of self-reliance. The emperor penguin is the penguin that fasts the longest when reproducing offspring. But in addition to reproducing offspring, the emperor penguin also has other fasting periods, that is, the "feathering" period when the old feathers fall off and new feathers grow. Other birds also have the physiological phenomenon of "feathering". Ordinary birds mostly grow new feathers slowly. But the emperor penguin completes this process in a short period of time of about a few weeks to a month. This is because the emperor penguin loses the waterproof ability of its feathers during the molting period and cannot dive into the sea. If it dives into the sea at this time, its body temperature will immediately drop. Therefore, during this period, the emperor penguins cannot hunt and have to fast. The emperor penguins wait motionlessly on the beach until their feathers grow out completely. This painful molting process occurs once a year. Why do they have to do this kind of austerity every year, accompanied by a hunger strike? For emperor penguins, diving is for hunting. Therefore, it is essential to have good feathers all the time, so emperor penguins grow new feathers every year to achieve the best waterproofing purpose.

The current record for the deepest diving without a submersible is 90 meters. The emperor penguin can dive up to 564 meters, which is undoubtedly the highest record among birds. The emperor penguin, which has given up the ability to fly, has also undergone some changes in its body in order to be able to swim in the sea. Generally speaking, birds have low bone density and light weight in order to fly in the air. In contrast, the emperor penguin has a high bone density and weighs more than three times that of birds of the same size. Especially the webbed feet on the emperor penguin's short wings. Because they are supported by hard bones, they can withstand the pressure of water and swim powerfully. Although it is swimming, it is actually like using the webbed feet to "fly" in the sea, and by flapping the water to gain propulsion, so as to dive rapidly into the depths of the ocean.

The emperor penguin's skeletal structure is not the only thing that makes it special. Although birds are warm-blooded animals, it is certain that the body temperature of an emperor penguin's abdomen will drop when it is diving. By lowering the body temperature, the body's metabolism can be suppressed, oxygen consumption can be reduced, and the diving time can be extended. In this way, the emperor penguin has evolved a system to regulate its own body temperature. Surveys show that the emperor penguin can dive for up to 20 minutes with the help of its internal sensors and this ability to regulate body temperature.

Although researchers use various scientific methods to study emperor penguins, there are still unsolved mysteries. For example, the problem of sense of direction on land and in water. Many species of emperor penguins build nests in the same place every year. Not only that, sometimes they leave their young in the nest to hunt for food by themselves. How to return to the nest correctly after leaving the nest to hunt in the sea? Especially when moving hundreds of kilometers on the white ice field and the vast ocean, it must be very difficult to make marks. There are many theories about this now. For example, the theory of memorizing the position of the sun and the sunlight reflected by the ice surface, and the theory of identifying the position through the earth's magnetic field. However, even emperor penguins traveling in a continuous storm can find the direction of the nest; even if they are equipped with a device with a magnet, their actions will not change due to interference. These results are contradictory to the aforementioned theories, and the correct explanation has not yet been found.

Unlike many other penguin species, emperor penguins do not breed on the coast, they usually choose sea ice as their breeding ground. Recently, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey announced a heartbreaking news: Affected by climate change and melting sea ice, the reproduction of emperor penguins has suffered a catastrophic failure in recent years. Every year, nearly 10,000 pairs of emperor penguin parents watch their children die of starvation and freezing in the icy sea water. If global carbon emissions and warming trends are not controlled, the number of emperor penguins may decrease by as much as 86% by 2100, and the species will be on the verge of extinction.