The cold-resistant bird penguin generally lays eggs in which month? Is it May in Antarctica?
As children, everyone studied a text about penguin babies. So in which month does the most cold-resistant bird, the penguin, generally lay eggs? According to a docent at the Dalian Aquarium, in the Southern Hemisphere it is May—June on the Gregorian calendar, and in the Northern Hemisphere November-December is the season when penguins lay eggs. At this time many people wonder: May is winter in Antarctica, so shouldn't penguins lay eggs in summer? In fact, male penguins incubating eggs is indeed an arduous task, because the penguin's reproductive season falls right in the Antarctic winter, with severe cold and howling wind and snow. The reason the penguin's reproductive period is chosen in the Antarctic winter is that there are fewer enemies in winter, which can raise the reproduction rate, and at the same time, by the time the little penguins grow able to move about independently and forage, the Antarctic summer has arrived, and the little penguins can leave their parents and live on their own? This is also the result of penguins adapting to the Antarctic environment.
The penguin can be said to be the most cold-resistant bird. Take the emperor penguin: its whole body is covered in dense feathers, and its subcutaneous fat is as thick as two to three cm. This special insulation allows it to live at ease in ice and snow at minus sixty degrees Celsius. If a human were exposed to such low temperatures, they would live no more than ten minutes at most. In addition, penguins living in the frigid zone also have feathers inside their nostrils, which can keep snowflakes from entering the nostrils when snow drifts, while penguins in the temperate zone have no such equipment.
Penguins are cold-resistant, but they are very intolerant of heat; penguins in temperate regions mostly move about only at dawn or dusk, and when the sun is at its height they hide in shady places to escape the heat! In South America there is a kind of Magellanic penguin that migrates every year in July and August to the beaches of Uruguay. When spring comes, if the water temperature and air temperature suddenly rise, hundreds of penguins often die of heat as a result!
Penguins belong to the penguin family of the order Sphenisciformes, and count as a relatively ancient group of birds; they were already living on Earth about fifty million years ago. Today there are eighteen species of penguins in the world, distributed only in the Southern Hemisphere. Apart from a few exceptions, most live in Antarctica or in the land and oceans near Antarctica.
Among birds, penguins are super athletes. Many water birds swim by paddling forward in the water with their webbed feet, but although penguins' feet also have webbing, they are used only as a rudder to control direction; the power for forward movement comes entirely from those oar-like wings, flapping and flying through the water.
The kinds of penguins There are 18 species of penguins existing in the world today, and they are the little blue penguin, the white-flippered penguin, the yellow-eyed penguin, the Magellanic penguin, the Humboldt penguin, the Galapagos penguin, the emperor penguin, the king penguin, the Adelie penguin, the Antarctic penguin, the gentoo penguin, the Snares penguin, the crested penguin, the erect-crested penguin, the macaroni penguin and the rockhopper penguin
The evolution of penguins Archaeologists infer from penguin fossils that penguins lived in the Australia, New Zealand and Antarctic region from 140 million to 650 million years ago. According to the experts' inference, ancient penguins could fly (amazing, right?) At that time penguins lived on land, and some ancient penguins were as tall as 2 m, so probably few animals dared to touch penguins! Therefore penguins had no natural enemies. Ancient penguins also had to go into the sea to find food, so their large wings gradually evolved into flippers suitable for swimming.