Informative Essay On Penguins

There are all kinds of penguins, three popular ones are Gentoo, Adelie and Emperor. The first penguin I’m going to tell you about is the gentoo penguin they are pretty cool looking penguins, not very big. They only grow to about 30 inches tall, about 2 and a half ruler sticks. They only weigh about 12 pounds, Just a bit heavier than a newborn baby. These penguins live in large colonies with other gentoo penguins. They dive deep for the food, they eat other small fish and krill. They don’t need to eat a whole lot of food because of they are very small. They have some predators but their main predators are skuas, who mainly kill chicks and eggs, killer whales who can only kill them when they are swimming and leopard seals. Gentoo breeding

The next penguin I am going to talk about is the Adelie penguin. They are the smallest penguins out of the three I’m talking about they only grow to about 27.2 inches tall they only weigh about 8 pounds the weight of an average newborn baby. Although very small these penguins are very fast swimmers. They can swim at a top speed of 72 km/h! The population of these birds are about 5 million and counting. They have a different breed season from the gentoo penguin and the emperor. They breed from November-February. They also have less common predators which is odd because they are smaller. Their predators are skuas which prey on eggs and chicks and leopard seals. Last but not least the Emperor penguin my personal favourite. They eat different kinds of fish in kind of a cool way. They have weird tongues with spikes on them to slice the fish up so it is easier to digest. These penguins are the biggest out of the three that I’m talking about they grow up to 3.8 feet and 60 pounds! That is massive. They have a breed season that is from April-December. These penguins live in colonies like the gentoo. They have three common predators, killer whales, leopard seals and skuas who prey on their eggs and chicks just

It is ironic that they are known as elephant of the sea because the first seal on my list is the elephant seal. The males grow up to about 20 inches long the females not as big only about 10 inches long. These male seals weigh up to about 4 tonnes which is about 4 small cars! The female are a lot smaller they only weigh on average about 1 tonne just a little under the weight of a small car. They are known as the elephant seal because of their trunk like nose. They hardly have any predators which makes sense i mean look at the size of those things. In the 1800’s they were hunted almost to the brink of extinction. Now there are about 700,000 of them to date. They can dive to 1550 metres and can hold their breath for 100+ minutes. If you can dive 1550 metres you need to be able to hold your breath for that long. The male of this species compete very destructively to obtain breeding rights. Their main food is fish and squid. The leopard seal is also very interesting. They are not even as close in size to the elephant seal. They only grow to about 10 inches both male and female and only 750 pounds. But their long and sharp teeth are very deadly to their prey. Their dark grey back really stands out in the desert of snow. Although they are smaller than the elephant seal they are also more ferocious. Their name means small clawed water worker. I always thought it was because they have spots all over them like a