Penguins Do the Wave to Keep Warm | National Geographic

when the temperature is as cold as minus
50 degrees Fahrenheit it helps if
there’s a warm body nearby emperor
penguins in the Antarctic are known to
huddle together for warmth but what we
didn’t realize was that they were
creating a wave when new penguins joined
the huddle and that wave helped move the
huddle and mass physicist Daniel sitter
Bart from the University of Erlangen
Nuremberg in Germany recorded
high-resolution time-lapse images of the
huddle near the new mayor Antarctic
Research Station they were then speeded
up to see what was happening as Penguins
move in generally from the rear penguins
in the huddle make small steps in a
formation to help the tightly formed
mass remain intact sitter Bart and his
colleagues point out that it is crucial
that the huddle is continually
reorganized to give each penguin a
chance to spend sufficient time inside
the huddle
compared to time on the periphery the
wave is created by the small steps
estimated at just two to four inches the
researchers suggest those steps serve
three purposes first to keep the pack as
dense as possible second it leads to
forward motion of the entire huddle and
thirdly overtime leads to its
reorganization separate smaller Huddle’s
can also merge into larger clusters the
impure penguins in these videos are all
male and most carried an egg on his feet
the females have not yet returned to the
colony the study was published in the
online scientific journal PLoS ONE
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