Antarctica Wildlife: Penguins (Kingdom of the Penguins)

This is a short video on Antarctica, the frozen continent at the bottom of the earth. Even though it is so cold in Antarctica, lots of wildlife species thrive. The largest and most obvious are penguins, whales, seals, and some birds. There are many types of seals like the crab eater seal, the whettle seal, and the elephant seal. Here is an elephant seal crawling up on the beach and another taking shelter between some rocks. These are some whettle seals relaxing on an iceberg. And many kinds of whales like the minke whale, the humpback whale, and the orca killer whales. Here is a humpback whale in the ocean splashing around. Here is the elusive minke whale in a calm bay in the middle of the night. And this is a pod of killer whales swimming by the ship. Few people know that killer whales are not actually whales but rather a part of the dolphin family. The Antarctic shorelines are truly the kingdom of the penguins. There are millions and millions of penguins in Antarctica. This time of year they build nests out of pebbles, they lay eggs, and they sit on their eggs until they hatch. Not every penguin is nice. Some of them steal pebbles from other penguins nests and bring them into their own nest. The parent on the nest is protecting an egg or baby chick and can't get off the nest to fend off the pebble stealer or it risks losing its egg or chick to a hungry bird. And the chicks are seriously cute. There are actually many types of penguins. The emperor penguin, the macaroni penguin, the chinstrap penguin, the gen 2 penguin, the Adelie penguin, and many others. These are gen 2 penguins. You can tell from the orange beaks and white feathers near their eyes. These are chinstrap penguins. They look like they have black chinstraps on them or maybe that they are smiling all the time. This is an Adelie penguin. Its head is all black, even the beak, and has cool eyes. There are seven species of penguins that live in Antarctica in all. But no such thing as a snow penguin, so I made one. This is the rarest type of penguin in Antarctica, a snow penguin. There's only one of them on the entire continent right now. There are so many penguins, they make their own freeways in the snow. Penguins are really cool. They are part of the bird family, but their wings are too small to fly. And when they walk on land, they waddle, and it looks kind of funny. They are a little clumsy too, but in the water they are super swimmers and really fast. They use their wings as paddles, and they can reach a top swimming speed of over 20 miles an hour. One thing that's unique about Antarctica is that there's virtually no vegetation on it. No trees, no bushes, no grasses, just a little bit of lichen on the rocks. And then there are microscopic photoplankton in the ocean. This is how the food chain works. The plankton are tiny shrimp, and there are billions of them. There are some birds, but there are virtually no animals on Antarctica that only live on land. Here's a little bit of polar region trivia. Approximately how many penguins get eaten by polar bears each day? The answer is zero, because penguins live in the Antarctic where there are no polar bears, and polar bears live in the Arctic where there are no penguins. And then there's these guys, the arctic tern, the bird with the longest migration route in the world. Question, how far does the arctic tern migrate each year? The clue is that it's called an arctic tern. The arctic is pretty far away. The arctic tern migrates from the arctic ocean in the north to Antarctica in the south, basically pole to pole. With all the zigzags, it is an amazing 44,000 miles round trip. Just imagine walking 44,000 miles. And there's one more wildlife rule to remember here. It's very important not to disturb any animals.