African penguin
Spheniscus demersus
— Where the name comes from
Spheniscus is Greek for “little wedge”, from sphḗn, wedge: the wings flattened into flippers. Demersus is Latin, “plunged, submerged”, from its underwater world. It gives the lie to the prejudice that penguins live only among ice: this one nests on the sunbaked beaches of South Africa.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Penguins
- Habitat
- Temperate rocky coasts and islands
- Range
- The coasts of South Africa and Namibia
- Size
- 60–70 cm, 2.2–3.5 kg
- Diet
- Fish eater — anchovies, sardines, small shoaling fish
- Lifespan
- 10–27 years
— Characteristics
- 01
Its call brays like a donkey, hence the old name of jackass penguin.
- 02
Pink patches above the eyes shed heat: they are glands for cooling in the sun.
- 03
Every individual has a pattern of black spots on the breast as unique as a fingerprint.
— What sets it apart
The African penguin is proof that these birds are not creatures of the ice: it lives where the summer scorches, and to keep from overheating it has developed patches of bare pink skin around the eyes, richly supplied with blood, which shed heat like radiators. The hotter it gets, the redder those patches turn. A bird we associate with Antarctica is in fact fighting the African sun.
