1 Emperor penguins breed and raise their young mostly on “fast ice”, a floating platform of frozen ocean that is connected to the land or to ice shelves. From birth, they spend their entire lives in and around the Antarctic ice, although very rarely vagrants have turned up off the coast of New Zealand.
2 Emperors are the biggest of the 18 penguin species found today, and one of the largest of all birds. They are approximately 120cm tall and weigh about 40kg, although their weight fluctuates through the year. They would be dwarfed by the ancient “mega-penguins”. Fossils recovered from the Antarctic peninsula reveal that a colossus species of penguin which lived about 37m years…
