Penguin
Featured in: Year 1: Animals, including humans
Penguin
Bird
A flightless bird that mostly lives in the Southern Hemisphere, hunting fish in the ocean.
💡 Fun Facts
- Penguins can't fly in the air, but their flippers make them incredible swimmers.
- The Emperor Penguin can dive more than 500 metres deep and hold its breath for 20 minutes.
- They have a special gland that filters salt out of their bloodstream.
Name Story
Aptenodytes forsteri
means “Forster's flightless diver”
What does its name mean?
- Aptenodytes — flightless diverGreek a- 'without' + ptēnos 'winged/able to fly' + dytēs 'diver'
- forsteri — of Forsternamed after the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, who sailed with Captain Cook
- penguin — once the name of a completely different northern birdEnglish; first used for the now-extinct great auk, then passed to these southern birds
This bird's scientific name means 'flightless diver' — and that is exactly what a penguin is, a bird that cannot fly through the air but 'flies' underwater instead. Here's a surprise: the word 'penguin' first belonged to a quite different bird far away in the north, the great auk, before sailors carried the name south to these ice-loving swimmers.