The Penguin Perspective: Dreams Do Come True -- And Lead to New Commitments

Penguins, courtesy of Wikipedia

Penguins (order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers. Most penguins feed on krill, fish, squid, and other forms of sealife caught while swimming underwater. They spend about half of their lives on land and half in the oceans.

Although all penguin species are native to the southern hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin live so far south. Several species are found in the temperate zone, and one species, the Galápagos Penguin, lives near the equator.

The largest living species is the Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri): adults average about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall and weigh 35 kg (75 lb) or more. The smallest penguin species is the Little Blue Penguin (Eudyptula minor), also known as the Fairy Penguin, which stands around 40 cm tall (16 in) and weighs 1 kg (2.2 lb). Among extant penguins, larger penguins inhabit colder regions, while smaller penguins are generally found in temperate or even tropical climates (see also Bergmann's Rule). Some prehistoric species attained enormous sizes, becoming as tall or as heavy as an adult human. These were not restricted to Antarctic regions; on the contrary, subantarctic regions harboured high diversity, and at least one giant penguin occurred in a region not quite 2,000 km south of the equator 35 mya, in a climate decidedly warmer than today. (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Dreams Do Come True -- And Lead to New Commitments

Lucy and Bernd Steinitz visited Antarctica in December 2010, as part of a long-dreamed-of round-the-world trip lasting a year, a gift to each other after many years of work in Namibia and other parts of Africa. (Being Lucy and Bernd, they also tied this to time spent volunteering as they traveled.)

They invite you to visit their website, to sample the trip yourself. Today I re-read Diary 11-A, Bernd's Dream Comes True, downloaded from their blog (which is reached from the website): It's the part where they arrive at the continent that so few of us will see in person. Here's what I found:

The trip opened our eyes to parts of the world and chapters in history that we never knew about before, and it also re-enforced our commitment to wildlife protection. We can also appreciate for the first time what it must have been like for Lucy’s father to visit the South Pole during the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958 (as a journalist who wrote about his experiences in German) and even more, what it must have been like for the very early explorers who often had to over-winter on the ice with little more than the clothes on their backs and a few tools. And as an added bonus, we have fallen hopelessly in love with penguins as some of the cutest, most hearty, and most threatened species on earth.