Life At The Zoo – Penguins Are The Strangest Birds
Here’s a myth busted: Despite the fact that you can always see them together in cartoons, penguins and polar bears never really meet. They can’t. There are no penguins in the Northern Hemisphere. And despite the fact that they are actually BIRDS, Penguins can’t fly, so there’s no way for them to reach the Arctic, even if they wanted to. If they could fly, they probaly also would have left their zoo-life behind, long ago.
According to seaworld.org, the first sighting of a penguin has been documented by members of the Portuguese voyage of Vasco de Gama to India in 1497. In their tales written down in the Em Nome De Deus: The Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco Da Gama to India the men described penguins they had seen along Africa’s south coast – and boasted of what they did to them. Yes you guessed right: It’s what mankind always does, when encountering something in the animal world they didn’t know before:
Quote from „Em Nome De Deus: The Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco Da Gama to India 1497-1499 by Vasco Da Gama, Translation by Glenn Joseph Ames“ p. 42
The penguins related to this story probably were Blackfoot or Jackass penguins – unlike these little guys here: They are Humboldt penguins originating in South America (in coastal Chile and Peru). The Humboldt penguins‘ current world population is estimated at 12,000 breeding couples.
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