January 25, 2021

Watch What Happens When A Confused Penguin Hops Away With The Wrong Group

By Kavi Dolasia - 248 words

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A confused penguin on the Falkland Islands walked away with the wrong group (Credit: YouTube screen capture)

If you think all penguins look alike, you are not the only one. A hilarious video, captured by Andrea Barlow, director of the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust, reveals that the aquatic, flightless birds sometimes also have a hard time distinguishing between one another.

The recently-released footage, taken on the Falkland Islands — a remote archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean — shows two groups of rockhopper penguins crossing paths and engaging in a short, amicable conversation. According to Barlow, the colony of about twelve penguins on the left was returning from sea, while the joyfully skipping birds on the right were heading out to the water, probably in search of a yummy meal. However, as the two groups disperse and continue towards their respective destinations, a member of the right colony is seen hopping away with the other group. Fortunately, a buddy realized it was missing and rushed back to retrieve the confused bird.

A rockhopper penguin with chicks on the Falkland Islands (Credit: Andrew Shiva / CC-BY-SA-2.0/ Wikipedia.org)

Endemic to the islands north of Antarctica, from Chile to New Zealand, rockhopper penguins are the world's smallest penguins. The aquatic birds, which stand about 20 inches (1.6 feet) tall, sport a distinct crest of spiky yellow and black feathers on their heads, blood-red eyes, a red-orange beak, and pink webbed feet. Rockhopper penguins were once found in large numbers, especially on the Falkland Islands. However, commercial overfishing, pollution, and other factors, such as oil spills, have reduced their population by as much as 30 percent over the past two decades.

Resources: Dailymail.co.uk, Huffpost.com, Wikidpedia.org, nationalgeographic.com.

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