Male penguins fast for 65 days standing still and incubating eggs

From the beginning of the mating season, the male will usually go without food for 120 days. After the eggs hatch, it spends another 10 days looking after the young.

Of all the penguins, the Emperor penguin is known for the cruelest way of raising young. This species spends more than 70% of its life in the water, but every year until March and April, they will climb ashore and go inland, looking for a very safe place but not having a morsel of food. any.

There, they will solicit and mate with each other, then love crystallizes into a single egg weighing 450 grams.

Most penguins, once they have chosen a 'lover', will be faithful for the rest of their lives, so they are very careful when looking for a mate.

Depending on the species, their way of confessing varies, but the most famous is probably the "calling for a mate" with the characteristic that a penguin will stretch out two short pieces of wings and then stretch his neck to the sky. shrill sound. Females who see this performance will come and choose their favorite brother.

Emperor penguins alone do not do that, instead, they dance together. There is also a case where the male bird chooses a beautiful stone to give to the female as a marriage proposal, if the female bird will touch the stone, it will be considered a couple.

After laying eggs, the female will leave her husband and chicks in search of prey, while the male will place the eggs on his feet and press the eggs into a thick leather bag under his abdomen also known as the 'incubator bag' to keep the eggs warm. During the incubation process, the penguin will stand all the time.

Father and mother penguins will take turns to find prey to raise their babies. (Photo: Albert Dros/ Washington Post).

Penguins live in icy places, so they always work in groups, even their incubation is done in groups to not freeze to death.

Males will stand still and incubate eggs for 65 days in the cold of minus 60 degrees Celsius in Antarctica and do not eat or drink anything. Usually after the eggs hatch, the male also loses 40% of his body weight.

If you include the time from the beginning of the mating season, the male will usually not eat or drink for 120 days and after the eggs hatch, he will spend another 10 days taking care of the young.

The father will feed the young bird a nutrient called 'penguin milk', the milk is rich in fat and protein, so the chicks just need to drink this milk to be twice as big as when they were new. bloom.

When the young birds began to drink milk, the mother bird returned after a period of 'foraging far away'. Mother birds store bait in the stomach, when they come home they will 'vomit' the bait to feed the young. After that, the mother bird and the father bird will take turns looking for food to raise the baby.

The image of a couple of penguins taking turns taking care of their children is touching, but also has a rather scary side to it. That is in the process of rearing, if the young bird dies prematurely, the mother bird will go and take the other mother's baby to her home.

However, the process of 'raising people' is not always convenient, because many mother birds, after robbing people, leave after a few days of boredom.

In the world of penguins, there is also a case where two fathers raise a baby bird. For example, a zoo in Denmark has a couple of gay penguins, they tried to give them an egg and found that the couple had successfully hatched and raised a delicious 'baby'.

This case is not uncommon among penguin species scattered around the world. This shows that love in the penguin world has many different forms and is worth learning.