Card #033 · Birds
King penguin
Aptenodytes patagonicus
Common LC · Least Concern
Field notes
- Classification
- Order Sphenisciformes · Family Spheniscidae
- Range
- Subantarctic islands
- Size
- 70–100 cm (28–39 in)
- Weight
- 9.3–18 kg (21–40 lb)
- Lifespan
- 15–26 yrs
- Diet
- Lanternfish, squid
Most Notable
Its breeding cycle runs 14 to 16 months, longer than a year. A colony therefore always holds chicks at every stage, and a pair that raises one successfully cannot breed again the next summer.
The chick is a shaggy brown barrel, so unlike its parents that early naturalists wrote it up as a separate animal, the woolly penguin. It has to stand out the subantarctic winter in that down, fed at long intervals and fasting for weeks between meals.
It builds no nest at all. The single egg rides on the parents' feet under a fold of belly skin, and the pair take turns carrying it.
It hunts lanternfish far below the reach of daylight, diving past 100 m as a matter of routine and recorded once at 343 m.
There are around 2.23 million breeding pairs and the species overall is increasing, but some colonies are shrinking as warming water pushes the fish they depend on further south.
Range: Breeding islands scattered across the Southern Ocean.