The world was recently blessed by the return of Wallace & Gromit’s Feathers McGraw in the movie Vengeance Most Fowl. In it, we see McGraw up to his old tricks as he hacks into Wallace’s secret files in a nail-biting scene that has him sweating at the controls of a homemade device. It got us wondering, do penguins sweat?
Do penguins need to keep cool?
There are 18 species of penguin, all of which are native to the Southern Hemisphere. We often associate them with the extremes of cold, which is certainly the case for the eight great penguin species of Antarctica.
Harrowing documentaries have captured the extreme conditions Emperor penguins endure as they huddle against the freezing cold. They’re not exactly conditions you need to be able to sweat to tolerate, but there are several species of penguin that live in temperate areas and even one that lives near the equator.
The Galápagos penguin is the northernmost species of penguin that experiences temperatures above 29°C (86°F). So, how do they keep their cool on hot days?
Do penguins sweat?
No, penguins do not sweat. Nor does any other bird, for that matter. According to the Bird Alliance Of Oregon, birds have evolved to moderate their body temperature by panting rather than sweating, and the same is true of penguins. They do this by standing with their flippers extended and panting like a dog, and it’s just one of several adaptations they have for maintaining a healthy temperature.
Penguins have tightly packed and interlocked feathers that help them to keep warm when spending large amounts of time in the ocean, but Galápagos penguins have bare patches to help them radiate heat. They’ll also stand with their flippers out to make the most of the sea breeze, and bend over so that the skin of their feet is sheltered from the Sun.
Penguins do have a supraorbital gland that excretes salt, but this is an adaptation that enables them to survive without access to freshwater rather than having anything to do with lowering their body temperature. The same adaptation is seen in marine iguanas who sneeze out the excess salt several times a day.
Hungry for more cool penguin facts?
When you boil a chicken’s egg, the translucent albumen turns white as it coagulates, creating the white-with-a-yellow-center boiled egg many of us are familiar with. Do the same to a penguin egg and instead of turning white, the albumen stays translucent, creating a very peculiar-looking egg in which you can see right through to the yolk.
The magic trick comes down to the ratio of glycoproteins they contain. While chicken eggs are rich in mostly ovalbumin, penguin eggs contain 25 percent penalbumin, which helps them to survive in the region’s freezing temperatures.
So, penguins don’t sweat, but they will pant like a dog while laying one of nature’s strangest eggs. Don’t you just love the animal kingdom? And while we’re talking weird nature, ever wondered why sheep have rectangular pupils?
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