Heat Conservation Advantages for Penguins When Huddling

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Heat Conservation Advantages for Penguins When Huddling

Aim and Introduction

My aim is to find out the heat conservation advantages are for

penguins are when huddling. I will be huddling boiling tubes (to

represent the penguins) containing hot water (to represent the

penguins' blood) and measuring the temperature over a period of time.

I also had a control boiling tube on its own to see how the

temperature is affected by not huddling.

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To keep themselves warm penguins use blubber as well as stiff tightly packed feathers (up to 70 per sq in). These feathers also overlap and provide waterproofing. They coat these feathers with oil from a special gland to make them impermeable to water. New ones grow underneath, but penguins grow new feathers under the old ones and then the old ones are shed all at once. Because Penguins are flightless this complete malting is no hazard to them

There are 18 different types of Penguins but they all have certain

things in common. All penguins have the well-known tux coloration.

Some are white and black and some are white and blue simultaneously.

Colour in penguins is rare, being limited to red or yellow irises of

the eye in some species, red beaks or feet in a few species, yellow

brow tufts in the three species of Eudyptes and orange and yellow on

the head, neck, and breast in the two species of Aptenodytes.

Penguins range from about 35 centimetres (14 inches) in height and approximately one kilogram (about two pounds) in weight, in the little blue, or fairy, penguin (Eudyptula minor), to 115 centimetres (45 inches) and 25 to 40 kilograms (55 to 90 pounds) in the emperor penguin ( Aptenodytes forsteri )

The total populations of some species, such as the emperor penguin, are estimated in hundreds of thousands, but those of most species of smaller penguins certainly run to several million. The largest breeding colonies are on the islands between 50 [IMAGE] south latitude and Antarctica . These immense colonies, some of which contain hundreds of thousands of individuals, represent a large potential food resource, but the economic importance of penguins is negligible.

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