Arctic Tern
Arctic Tern
Bird
The Arctic tern is the greatest traveller of all, flying roughly 70,000 km from pole to pole every year and chasing summer so well that it sees more daylight than any other animal.
💡 Fun Facts
- The Arctic tern makes the longest migration of any animal — about 70,000 km every year, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back.
- It sees two summers each year, and so enjoys more daylight than any other creature.
- Over a long life it can fly far enough to reach the Moon and back three times.
Name Story
Sterna paradisaea
means “the paradise tern”
likely meaning'Paradise' is the plain meaning, but why the naturalist Pontoppidan chose it in 1763 was never explained.
What does its name mean?
- Sterna — ternLatinised from an old northern word for the bird (stearn)
- paradisaea — of paradiseLatin, from Greek paradeisos 'garden, paradise'
Its name means 'the paradise tern'. No one wrote down exactly why, but it suits a bird that chases an endless summer from one end of the Earth to the other, seeing more daylight than any other animal.