Warm penguins

It is often thought that penguins live in cold countries like the Antarctic, but there are Humboldt birds that live in warm lands. This bird is named after the name of the Humboldt flow (the cold water flow of the South Pacific Ocean flows north, along the west coast - South America). The scientific name of Humboldt penguin is Spheniscus Humboldti.

Humboldt penguins specialize in hunting fish (about 30 types of small fish swimming in the herd), eating molluscs (some species of squid) and crustaceans. Their food is seasonally changed, thanks to special routes on the body, so the Humboldt penguin easily removes excess salt from the body by drinking a lot of seawater and eating a lot of marine animals. At speeds of 18-26 miles per hour, they easily chase and catch small fish.

Usually, they dive deep into 60-80m to find food, and climb to the surface to breathe after 2-3 minutes of diving. But the penguins are raising children can dive down to 150m depth to find enough food.

At the end of each breeding season, parents go out to sea to feed for a long time, they eat a lot and become the most stout of the year. When they reached the shore, their body weight had doubled, they were so fat that they had to crawl up the shore, but could not stand up to go. After that, the Humboldt penguin will undergo many weeks of molting, which will fasten during the molt, thus losing half of its weight. During molting, they are less exposed to cold water because the body is no longer insulated well. During this period, they will easily become prey for many types of game hunters, because the energy in them is depleted and because the fur is no longer good to help them move quickly in the water.

This warm country penguin is quite easy to identify: Their faces are black and white, the upper part of the body is black, the lower part of the white abdomen makes them easy to disguise. From below, the white belly makes them difficult to detect due to the dim light of the sun shining through the water; From above, the black on their backs blended with the deep black below so they were hard to detect.

Humboldt penguins have an oil gland in the tail, which is used to apply to hair, making their feathers waterproof. The coat becomes ragged after a year and is renewed after the breeding season. Although not flying in the air, penguins can "fly" under water. They swim with webbed wings and legs but they don't use their feet to swim but use them to drive. Hard skeletons help them dive deep in search of prey; mines have razor sharp edges.

On average, they stand about 60cm tall, weigh 3-5kg, the female is slightly smaller than the empty one. Under conditions of human nourishment they can live over 30 years of age.

Humboldt penguins often live together in large groups. When moving on land they often go into a row; the previous one, the second one is long after the tail.

The coast where Humboldt penguins live is vulnerable to the El Nino Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO) which often causes extremely scarce food seasons. In such a time, the cool and nutrient-rich currents along the Chilean and Peruvian coasts are replaced by warmer, but nutrient-poor currents that flow from the Middle Pacific. Low-nutrient water will significantly reduce floating plants, directly adversely affecting the entire food chain. As the top predator of that food chain, Humboldt penguins become one of the most severely affected species, sometimes facing the possibility of starvation. Such occurrences of ENSO, weather or erratic, can bring a lot of rain and flood. The nest of the Humboldt penguin may be washed away.

Humbold penguins also drowned by being caught in the fishing net. Many types of carnivores also threaten their lives.

The nest of Humboldt penguins is mainly found on islands off Peru and Chile. They often burrow into nests in the pile of dried bird droppings, to protect themselves, along with their eggs and young offspring from sun heat and evil animals. Bird manure is a valuable fertilizer in agriculture, often scraped off by people who exploit it.

Large Humbold penguin hunting in their breeding grounds is also one of the main reasons for this rapid decline in many places. Their food source also decreased due to fishing activities. Therefore, the number of these species is decreasing rapidly, from hundreds of thousands of children in the middle of the 19th century to a few thousand.

Humbold penguins begin to breed when they are 2 years old, they live together for life. The female lays two eggs at a time. The incubation period lasts about 6 weeks, both males and females participate in incubating eggs.

Young birds eat food burnt by their parents, parents go to the sea to find food to feed their children from early morning and return to the nest at dusk. The time to seek food will increase as the calves get bigger and need more food. Penguins rarely eat away from nesting places more than 35km, but in winter can also migrate a few hundred kilometers before returning to breed other offspring.

Each litter of penguins usually has only one young animal surviving. Young birds leave the nest after hatching for about 1 month, when they can enter the water. After 10-12 weeks of age, the young enough to leave their feathers will leave their birthplace. After that, for many months they stayed in the sea to feed.