THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 17 
efforts to escape the birds will at once rise to their feet and show fight, facing their 
antagonists and using bill and flippers simultaneously, and the stroke of an Emperor 
Penguin’s wing, if caught fairly on the hand or on the shin, leaves a bruise which will 
be felt for many weeks. 
When pressed to travel as fast as possible they glide along on the ice at the rate 
of about 8 or 10 miles an hour (see fig. 11, p. 18). This rate is, of course, much 
exceeded in the water, where their speed and dodging power probably rivals that of 
fishes, seals, and whales. They swim with their wings, and may often be seen to leap 
from the water and land upright on a shelf of ice at least four feet above the surtace. 
Their only enemies, so far as is known, are also inhabitants of the water ; and their 
ideas of fear are connected chiefly with that element, as in the case of Adélie Penguins. 
We once found the ragged skin of an Emperor Penguin in the stomach of a 
12-foot Sea Leopard (Stenorhinchus leptony«), and this seal has been known to take 
Adélie Penguins (Pygoscelis adelix) in the water as they were thrown to it from 
the ship. There is therefore no doubt that the Sea Leopard is one of the 
Emperor’s active foes. Probably none of the other seals would attempt to molest 
it; but the Killer Whale (Orca gladiator), whose food is seal and dolphin, would 
almost certainly take Emperor Penguins if they came in its way. This however we 
did not see ; nor did we anywhere come across another dead Emperor Penguin, except 
on one occasion, when the mangled skin of an adult bird turned almost inside out floated 
past our ship as we entered McMurdo Sound. Probably it was the remains of a bird 
which had died and had formed a feast for some Skua (Megalestris maccormicki) or 
Giant Petrel (Ossifraga gigantea). Neither of these birds, however, should be 
considered the natural enemy of the Emperor Penguin, for I do not believe that 
this Petrel attacks things living, as a rule; nor has the Skua any opportunity to 
attack the Emperor Penguin’s chickens, since at the time of their infancy, in the 
winter and early spring, they are many hundreds of miles to the south of the region 
then infested by the Skuas. 
The Emperor Penguin sleeps either standing in the upright position with its head 
turned back over the shoulder so that the tip of the beak rests under the back of the 
wing (see fig. 14, p. 22), or else in the prone position with the head drawn in upon the 
neck. The positions assumed by the chick are seen to be slightly different (figs. 19, 20, 
p. 26). Both attitudes are to be seen in the photograph taken by Lieutenant-Engineer 
Skelton (fig. 5, p. 8). Whether the former posture is a relic of days gone by, when the 
bird had a fully feathered wing and was capable of flight, it is not easy to say ; but it 
is suggestive to see it take up an attitude which would have been comfortable when 
it had thick warm feathers into which to breathe. It may be that the position is 
merely a convenient one for balance, and it is quite certain that all comfort must 
have disappeared since the wing became converted into a bony flipper. The prone 
position is certainly more reasonable with a view to economising body-heat. Both 
attitudes are assumed by the chick in its earliest stages when taken from the adult. 
