1. These penguins do like to be touched and will bite or bash you with their flippers if you get too close, but sometimes we have to catch them to make measurements. They are very tough birds, and the coat of feathers is very dense. It feels like holding a football.
2. Most of the interaction I have with them is to simply watch and observe. They are very animated and have personalities. Lots of drama in the colony with everyone so close to each other, and I never get tired of watching them go out over the sea ice to find food.
3. I have always been interested in birds and my college degree is about birds, but it wasn’t until I came to Antarctica for the first time in 1999 that I really fell in love with penguins.
4. I have been scratched by a penguin, but like any other scratch I just washed it well, there was not infection.
5,7 Adelie Penguins always lay 2 eggs and care for them both.
6. It takes about 50 days from hatching to being on their own. In that time they will multiply their birth weight by 30.
8. The eggs take about 30-35 days to hatch.
9. We can not interfere with nature here, we are only observers.
10. In the wild Adelie Penguins can live to be about 20 years old, probably longer in the zoos where they do not have to worry about getting food or leopard seals, their main predator.

Unfortunately a couple of penguin species probably won’t be around to exhibit their response to the finish of the climate change experiment. This is because industrial fishing (catching fish used in the US) , in another great experiment (removing the fish from the ocean), has already earned them a place on the Endangered Species List. Five more penguin species, for the same reason, were just added to the list as ‘threatened species’ (not quite on the brink of extinction). For sure, the true Antarctic penguins are now abundant enough that they may see what end to these experiment s there will be that we will be seeing in the not-so-distant future (humans being born this decade will be tallying the results).

So, anyway, unfortunately, we’re all in this experiment together.
Cheers (?), David Ainley

1. Do penguins allow you to touch them, and if so how do they feel?
2. Do you get a chance to interact with them when you’re not working?
3. When did you start getting interested in studying penguins?
4. If you get bit or scratched by a penguin, do they carry any bacteria that might cause disease or an infection?
5. In the video we saw a mother penguin with two babies. Do they have twins? And if so, how do they care for both eggs?
6. How long do baby penguins get cared for by their parents before they take off on their own?
7. If there are twins, would both be taken care of or would one be abandoned?
8. How long are penguins in their egg before they hatch?
9. If you found an abandoned penguin, would you adopt it or let nature take its course?
10. How long does a penguin generally live, and if it dies early, what usually kills it?

We look forward to your respones. Thanks.
Mrs. Hutchins’s class