Fossil evidence of a third species- Ridgen's Penguin ( A. patagonicus), the Emperor Penguin is one of two extant species in the genus Aptenodytes. Together with the similarly coloured but smaller King Penguin ( A. Its specific epithet is in honour of the German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, who accompanied Captain James Cook on his second Pacific Voyage and officially named five other penguin species.
The Emperor Penguin was described in 1844 by English zoologist George Robert Gray, who derived its generic name from the Ancient Greek a/α "without" pteno-/πτηνο- "feather" or "wing" and dytes/δυτης "diver". The males who grow taller unfortunately live shorter lives than the females due to the fasting period that they face every winter. The lifespan is typically 20 years in the wild, although observations suggest that some individuals may live to 50 years of age. The female lays a single egg, which is incubated by the male while the female returns to the sea to forage parents subsequently take turns foraging at sea and caring for their chick in the colony. The only penguin species that breeds during the Antarctic winter, it treks 50–120 km (31–75 mi) over the ice to breeding colonies which may include thousands of individuals. The Emperor Penguin is perhaps best known for the sequence of journeys adults make each year in order to mate and to feed their offspring. It has several adaptations to facilitate this, including an unusually structured haemoglobin to allow it to function at low oxygen levels, solid bones to reduce barotrauma, and the ability to reduce its metabolism and shut down non-essential organ functions. In hunting, the species can remain submerged up to 18 minutes, diving to a depth of 535m. Like all penguins, it is flightless, with a streamlined body and wings stiffened and flattened into flippers for a marine lifestyle.įish form the bulk of its diet, which can include crustaceans, and cephalopods, such as squid. The dorsal parts are black and sharply delineated from the white belly, pale-yellow breast and bright-green ear patches. The male and female are similar in plumage and size, reaching 122 cm in height and weighing anywhere from 22–37 kg (48–82 lb). The Emperor Penguin ( Aptenodytes forsteri) is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica. The upper mandible of the 8cm long bill is black, and the lower mandible can be pink, orange or lilac.