Are there really no penguins in the Northern Hemisphere?

Penguins, small animals that walk in a wobbly manner, have always been loved by children and adults alike because they are so cute and adorable!

But did you know? Currently, penguins are only found in the Southern Hemisphere, not in the Northern Hemisphere! Not even in the Arctic! Why is that? Is it really so?

The birthplace of penguins is the Southern Hemisphere. The earliest known penguin fossils were found in New Zealand about 62 million years ago. Before the continental plates drifted, if penguins were widely distributed, they could still come to the Northern Hemisphere. But after the plates separated, if penguins wanted to come from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere, they had to cross the hot equator, which was an impossible task for penguins that could not fly, so they "lived peacefully" in the Southern Hemisphere.

Is it true that penguins from the southern hemisphere have never come to the northern hemisphere? Yes, they have, such as the Galapagos penguins near the equator.

Galapagos Penguins

This is the penguin species that lives closest to the Northern Hemisphere, right near the equator. Some people may ask, isn't it said that the equator is very hot, and penguins can't stand it, so how can they survive? The reason is the influence of the Peruvian cold current that flows through here. Under its influence, the temperature near the Galapagos Island is much lower than other places on the equator. When the Galapagos penguins hunt, they will take advantage of the Peruvian cold current to cross the equator and travel to the Northern Hemisphere.

In fact, there used to be animals similar to penguins in the Arctic, after all, the climates of the North and South Poles are so similar. In fact, there used to be a bird in the Arctic called the Great Auk, which was extremely similar to penguins in appearance, with the same black and white dress, the same clumsy way of walking, and the same inability to fly. The reason why it is said "once" is because this bird is now extinct. The Great Auk's former habitat was located in Greenland, Iceland and Newfoundland near the Arctic.

Great Auk

The extinction of the great auk is related to humans. First, its habitat happened to overlap with human activities, so humans hunted the great auk to make beautiful and warm down. Second, the great auk had a low reproductive capacity, laying only one egg at a time, and did not build a nest. Each egg was laid on the ground, which led to a relatively low survival rate of the great auk. In the 16th century, no great auk nests were found along the European coast, and by the 19th century, the great auk was officially extinct.

Some people once transported penguins from Antarctica to the Arctic to see if they could survive in the Arctic. But the reality is cruel, and penguins ultimately failed to survive in the Northern Hemisphere. Survival in the Northern Hemisphere not only requires facing fierce competition, but also more threats from natural enemies. There are no bears in Antarctica, but there are polar bears and Arctic foxes in the Arctic.

Therefore, penguins that travel across the ocean to the Northern Hemisphere can only live in zoos or polar oceanariums, but do not exist in nature.