The king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) is the second largest species of penguin, smaller than but somewhat similar in appearance to the emperor penguin.
King penguins mainly eat lanternfish, squid, and krill. On foraging trips, king penguins repeatedly dive to over , and have been recorded at depths greater than . Predators of the king penguin include giant petrels, skuas, the snowy sheathbill, the leopard seal, and the orca.
The king penguin breeds on the subantarctic islands at the northern reaches of Antarctica, South Georgia, southern Argentina, and other temperate islands of the region. It also lives on Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean and the Falkland Islands.
This bird was exploited commercially in the past for its blubber, oil, meat, and feathers. Today it is fully protected. The locality was restricted to South Georgia by Gregory Mathews in 1911.
Purported subspecies
The International Ornithologists' Union considers the species monotypic, recognizing no subspecies. However, some taxonomic authorities recognize two subspecies, A. p. patagonicus and A. p. halli; in this system, patagonicus is found in the South Atlantic and halli in the South Indian Ocean (at the Kerguelen Islands, Crozet Island, Prince Edward Islands, and Heard Island and McDonald Islands) and at Macquarie Island.<gallery mode="packed" heights="160">
File:King Penguin, Macquarie Island imported from iNaturalist photo 1949452.jpg|A. p. halli, at Macquarie Island
File:Aptenodytes patagonicus -St Andrews Bay, South Georgia, British Overseas Territories, UK -head-8 (1).jpg|A. p. patagonicus in St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia, British Overseas Territories, UK
</gallery>
Appearance
The king penguin stands at tall and weighs from . Although female and male king penguins look alike, they can be separated by their calls. Males are also slightly larger than females. The mean body mass of adults from Marion Island was for 70 males and for 71 females. Another study from Marion Island found that the mean mass of 33 adults feeding chicks was . The king penguin is approximately 25% shorter and weighs around a third less than the emperor penguin.
At first glance, the king penguin appears similar to the larger, closely related emperor penguin, with a broad cheek patch contrasting with surrounding dark feathers and yellow-orange plumage at the top of the chest. However, the cheek patch of the adult king penguin is a solid bright orange whereas that of the emperor penguin is yellow and white, and the upper chest tends to be more orange and less yellowish in the king species. Both have colourful markings along the side of their lower mandible, but these tend towards pink in emperor penguin and orange in king penguin.
Emperor and king penguins typically do not inhabit the same areas in the wild, with the possible exception of vagrants at sea, but the two can be distinguished from one another by the king's longer, straighter bill, larger flippers, and noticeably sleeker body. The juvenile king penguin with its long bill and heavy dark brown down is completely different in appearance from the mostly grey emperor chick with its black and white mask. Once moulted of its brown juvenile plumage, the king chick resembles the adult, but is somewhat less colourful.
thumb|Mounted skeleton of king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus)
The king penguin often breeds on the same large circumpolar islands as other penguin species, but it is easily distinguished from other species by its much larger size and taller frame, colorful markings, and grizzled sooty-greyish rather than blackish back.
Distribution and habitat
right|thumb|Great colony of king penguins on Salisbury Plain in [[South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands|South Georgia]]
King penguins breed on subantarctic islands between 45 and 55°S, at the northern reaches of Antarctica, as well as Tierra del Fuego (Argentinian part), the Falkland Islands, and other temperate islands of the region. The total population is estimated to be 2.23 million pairs and is increasing. The cause of this decline may be changes in the ecosystem related to climate change as their primary source of food is moving farther away from places where the penguins can breed. This may result in population declines and shifts in the locations of the king penguin breeding grounds.
The Nature Protection Society released several king penguins at Gjesvær in Finnmark and Røst in Lofoten in northern Norway in August, 1936. Penguins were seen in the area several times during the 1940s; there were a few unconfirmed sightings of penguins in the area during the early 1950s, but none have been officially recorded since 1949.
Ecology and behavior
thumb|King penguin chick
American zoologist Gerry Kooyman revolutionized the study of penguin foraging behaviour in 1971 when he published his results from attaching automatic dive-recording devices to emperor penguins, and recording a dive of by a king penguin in 1982. The current maximum dive recorded is 343 metres in the Falkland Islands region, and a maximum time submerged of 552 seconds was recorded at the Crozet Islands. The king penguin dives during daylight hours to depths of , spending around five minutes submerged, and to less than at night.
The majority (around 88% in one study) of dives undertaken by king penguins are flat-bottomed; that is, the penguin dives to a certain depth and remains there for a period of time hunting (roughly 50% of total dive time) before returning to the surface. They have been described as U-shaped or W-shaped, relating to the course of the dive. The remaining 12% of dives have a V-shaped or "spike" pattern, in which the bird dives at an angle through the water column, reaches a certain depth, and then returns to the surface. In contrast, other penguins dive in this latter foraging pattern. Observations at Crozet Islands revealed most king penguins were seen within of the colony. Using the average swimming speed, Kooyman estimated the distance travelled to foraging areas at . King penguins also "porpoise", a swimming technique used to breathe while maintaining speed. On land, the king penguin alternates between walking with a wobbling gait and tobogganing—sliding over the ice on its belly, propelled by its feet and wing-like flippers. Like all penguins, it is flightless.
King penguins have been shown to detect airborne odors from conspecific feathers and feces, indicating that they can use smell to perceive cues associated with their colonies, although the specific behavioral role of this ability remains unclear.
Diet
thumb|upright|King penguin [[moulting, with pin feathers visible]]
King penguins eat various species of small fish, squid, and krill. Fish constitute roughly 80% of their diet, except in the winter months of July and August, when they make up only around 30%.
- Skua species (Stercorarius spp.) take smaller chicks and eggs. Some studies may have overstated the effect skua predation has on king penguin colonies, but large numbers of chicks and eggs are taken in areas where skua nest close to penguin colonies.
- The snowy sheathbill (Chionis alba) and kelp gull (Larus dominicanus) scavenge for dead chicks and unattended eggs.
- The leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx) takes adult birds and fledglings at sea.
- Orcas also hunt king penguins.
- Male and especially pre-adult male Antarctic fur seals on Marion Island have also been observed chasing, killing, and eating king penguins on the beach.
Courtship and breeding
thumb|A pair of king penguins performs a courtship ritual on [[Salisbury Plain, South Georgia|Salisbury Plain, South Georgia.]]
thumb|Mating king penguins at [[Macquarie Island]]
The king penguin is able to breed at three years of age, although only a very small minority (5% recorded at Crozet Islands) actually do then; the average age of first breeding is around 5–6 years. King penguins are serially monogamous. They have only one mate each year, and stay faithful to that mate. However, fidelity between years is less than 30%. The unusually long breeding cycle probably contributes to this low rate.
The king penguin has a prolonged breeding cycle, taking around 14–16 months from laying to offspring fledging. Although pairs will attempt to breed annually, they are generally only successful one year in two, or two years in three in a triennial pattern in South Georgia.
thumb|King penguin egg
The female penguin lays one pyriform (pear-shaped) white egg weighing . It is initially soft but hardens and darkens to a pale greenish colour. It measures around . During this time, the parents alternate every 3–7 days, one guarding the chick while the other forages for food. The guard phase lasts for 30–40 days. By then the chick has grown much larger and is better able to both keep warm and protect itself against most predators. King chicks are very curious and will wander far when exploring their surroundings. The chicks form a group called a crèche and are watched over by only a few adult birds; most parents leave their chick in these crèches to forage for themselves and their chick. Other species of penguins also practice this method of communal care for offspring.
thumb|Close-up of king penguin chick in [[South Georgia Island|South Georgia]]
thumb|upright=2.5|center|A [[Crèche (zoology)|crèche of king penguin chicks at Gold Harbour, South Georgia]]
By April, the chicks are almost fully grown but lose weight while fasting over the winter months, gaining it again during spring in September. Fledging then takes place in late spring/early summer.
King penguins form huge breeding colonies; for example, the colony on South Georgia Island at Salisbury Plain holds over 30,000 breeding pairs and the colony at St. Andrew's Bay holds over 150,000 pairs. Because of the long breeding cycle, colonies are occupied year-round with both adult birds and chicks. During breeding, king penguins do not build nests, although they show strong territorial behaviour and keep a pecking distance to neighbouring penguins. Penguin positions in breeding colonies are highly stable over weeks and appear regularly spaced.
The king penguin feeds its chicks by eating fish, digesting it slightly, and regurgitating the food into the chick's mouth.
Because of their large size, king penguin chicks take 14–16 months before they are ready to go to sea. This is markedly different from smaller penguins, who rear their chicks through a single summer when food is plentiful. King penguins time their mating so the chicks will develop over the harshest season for fishing. In this way, by the time the young penguins are finally mature enough to leave their parents, it is summer when food is plentiful and conditions are more favorable for the young to survive alone at sea.
thumb|A pair changing the egg guard at [[South Georgia (island)|South Georgia Island, where over 30 colonies of king penguin reside. An important cause for reproductive failure in some penguin species is mistiming between parents for incubation relief.]]
Conservation
Impact of climate change
70% of king penguins are expected to disappear in less than eighty years. Considered sensitive indicators of changes in marine ecosystems, king penguins serve as a key species for understanding the effects of climate change on the marine biome, especially throughout the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic areas.
King penguins primarily feed at the Antarctic Convergence, which provides 80% of their food biomass. King penguins currently travel over the course of over a week to complete the journey. However, ocean warming could easily move these fronts further away from breeding grounds. Continuous ocean warming could cause the convergence zone to move polewards, away from king penguin breeding sites like the Falklands and the Crozet Islands. It has been suggested that if carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, king penguins will need to travel an additional in order to reach their feeding areas. Breeding grounds will also suffer from the rise of emissions. Nearly half of the total population will likely lose their breeding grounds by the year 2100. As foraging effort cannot increase indefinitely, strict specialists could be particularly vulnerable to prey composition shifts related to climate change.
Resource competition
King penguins are also threatened by large-scale commercial fishing that could deplete their main source of food: myctophid fish. Over 200,000 tons of myctophid fish were commercially exploited by the beginning of the 1990s in the South Georgia region. Ongoing attempts to further develop this fishery for human consumption close to key penguin foraging areas are likely to have negative impacts on food provisioning. It has also been suggested that in conservation modeling, special attention be paid to the southernmost breeding locations, given the predicted rise in water temperature in the Southern Ocean, and that complete regular censuses of breeding populations be carried out to detect temporal trends and environmental changes.
The species is classified as Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. Since 2004, the IUCN has reported that the population size is large and has increased its breeding rates. Adult king penguins have maintained high survival rates since the 1970s. The species is exhibited at SeaWorld Orlando, Indianapolis Zoo, Detroit Zoo, Saint Louis Zoo, Kansas City Zoo, Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky, Edinburgh Zoo and Birdland in the United Kingdom, Berlin Zoological Garden in Germany, Zurich Zoo and Zoo Basel in Switzerland, Diergaarde Blijdorp in the Netherlands, Antwerp Zoo in Belgium, 63 Seaworld in Seoul, South Korea, Melbourne Aquarium in Australia, Mar del Plata Aquarium in Argentina, Loro Parque in Spain and Ski Dubai in United Arab Emirates, Calgary Zoo and the Montreal Biodome in Canada, Odense Zoo in Denmark, Asahiyama Zoo in Hokkaido, Japan, and many other collections.
Notable king penguins
- Major General Sir Nils Olav was the Edinburgh-based mascot and colonel-in-chief of the Royal Norwegian Guard.
- The king penguin is also the species of penguin represented by the popular character Pondus, an image found on various paraphernalia in many retail stores throughout Canada. Pondus originates in Danish children's books written and photographed by Ivar Myrhøj and published in 1997 by Lademann publisher in the late 1960s. These penguins appeared in the production of Batman Returns.
- Lala the Penguin became a viral video star after an Animal Planet special featured him venturing to a nearby market in Japan to fetch a fish with a specially made backpack. Lala had been accidentally caught by a fisherman. The fisherman and his family nursed Lala back to health and then adopted him as a pet.
- Pesto (hatched 30 January 2024) is a king penguin living in Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium who gained notability in September 2024 due to his exceptionally large size.
References
Footnotes
Sources cited
- Williams, Tony D. (1995). The Penguins. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
External links
- King penguin on PenguinWorld
- Aptenodytes patagonicus, the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology's Animal Diversity Web
- King penguin videos, photos & sounds, the Internet Bird Collection
- King penguins pruning video from the Falkland Islands
- Johann R. Forster, "Historia Aptenodytae: Generis Avium Orbi Australi Propri", Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis (1778), Vol.III, 1781, pp. 211–148.