may ensue. This eagerness to brood the young sometimes resuhs in the chick's being so 

 roughly handled that it creeps away for shelter into a crevice in the ice, which spells its 

 doom, for there it inevitably freezes. 



In the spring, October or November, the birds begin their northward migration. 

 This they do by sitting on the edge of the ice until the pieces on which they're sitting 

 break oflTand float to the north. It is on these ice rafts that the young complete their 

 infancy. The emperor penguin's molt is a rapid one; it may be over in twenty days. 

 During this time its plumage is in no condition to withstand the water, and the birds 

 sit out this period starving on the edge of the ice or on floating ice pans. 



The emperor is the largest of the penguins; it may stand about four feet high, and 

 its weight has been recorded as up to 94 pounds. The bird walks upright, with great 

 dignity, when not hurried, but its gait is quite different when it is pressed. Then it goes 

 down on its breast and toboggans along rapidly, with alternate thrusts of its wings and 

 feet. The penguin form and its adaptations are, of course, for life in the water, where 

 penguins dive and swim in search of their marine animal food. The paddle-like wings 

 are extremely eflficient swimming organs and are thickly covered with very small scale- 

 like feathers. Murphy estimated that there are something like 3,800 feathers in the 

 dorsal surface of the forearm alone in the emperor penguin. To scramble out onto the 

 ice would be a difficult feat, and the emperor accomplishes this by jumping, darting 

 upward from considerable depth and landing feet first on ice as much as five feet above 

 the water. Such a maneuver would also be extremely effective in taking it beyond 

 reach of its principal enemy, the sea-leopard, one of the Antarctic seals. The voice of 

 the emperor penguin is loud, to match its bulk. According to Wilson it has a defiant 

 trumpet call that can be heard far over the ice fields. 



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