14 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



sea-leopard, and out of water none that is deadly 

 save man. The penguins take no particular notice 

 of the killer-whales, but they have a mortal terror 

 of the sea-leopards, who sometimes swallow them 

 whole. These voracious Pinnipedes often lurk 

 below the ledge from which the penguins dive, 

 and Dr. Levick gives us a glimpse of another side 

 of penguin nature when he tells of the tricks the 

 birds play to get one of their number to be the first 

 to go into the water. Apart from the sea-leopards, 

 man, and one another, the adult penguins live at 

 peace, but terrible damage is often done at thaw- 

 time by falling boulders and land-slides. Some- 

 times, too, crowds of nesting birds are buried in 

 snow-drifts which are especially serious when they 

 freeze on the surface. But even then the tough 

 creatures can survive for many weeks within little 

 chambers thawed by the warmth of their bodies, 

 and provided with breathing-holes through which 

 they thrust their heads. On the whole, the adult 

 birds are very safe, but among the eggs and the 

 young the mortality is high, for which the voracious 

 skuas and the recklessly combative or even vicious 

 cocks are largely to blame. 



There is a lighter side to the life of the penguins, 

 for they have developed a taste for certain primitive 

 games which they play on the sea-ice on their way 

 to and from their bathe. There is the diving, in 

 which the succession is so rapid " as to have the 

 appearance of a lot of shot poured out of a bottle 

 into the water"; there is the "porpoising," the 



