Image of the Day

Penguin, originally uploaded by mullers_za (Sonja).

[Poster] was sitting with friend who was fishing off the Saldanha Bay Coast when this little fellow decided to entertain [them] with his bathing ritual.

Interesting facts about penguins:

1. Penguins have knees.

2. Penguins' wings cannot bend due to the fact the bones in their wings have fused together to make a sort of stiff paddle.

3. There are exactly 17 species of penguins known. Each have different attributes, such as the smallest penguin to areas of pink around their eyes.

4. Most penguins swim at a speed of 15 mph in the water. The average Olympic swimmer can only swim around 5 mph.

5. The fastest species of penguin is the Gentoo, which can swim up to 17 miles per hour.

6. Most penguins live only in the Southern Hemisphere in the wild, even reaching up to Galapagos Island. The only ones in the Northern Hemisphere live at the uppermost part of the Galapagos Island

7. There are seventeen different species.

8. Penguins have a form of camouflage called counter shading. When predators look down in the water, they see the dark of water deep down. Penguins have black backs in order to not be seen from the top. Seen from below, predators see the light of the sun, so the penguins have white bellies to not be seen there.

9. The smallest penguin, called the Fairy Penguin, lives in Australia.

10. Penguins have a layer of air trapped in between their water-proof feathers that provides buoyancy.