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Changes in climate and ocean currents enabled penguins to spread across the Southern Hemisphere. The modern emperor penguin likely evolved much later within the last few million years to adapt to ...
Highly adapted for life in the ocean water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage and flippers for swimming. Most penguins feed on krill, fish, squid and other forms of sea life which they catch with their bills and swallow whole while swimming. A penguin has a spiny tongue and powerful jaws to grip slippery prey. [5]
Galápagos penguins breed throughout the year, capitalizing on the fluctuating availability of food resources linked to ocean currents. [48] This flexibility in breeding patterns is a critical adaptation for survival in an environment where food availability is inconsistent.
A great cormorant swimming. Aquatic locomotion or swimming is biologically propelled motion through a liquid medium. The simplest propulsive systems are composed of cilia and flagella. Swimming has evolved a number of times in a range of organisms including arthropods, fish, molluscs, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
Penguins swim by "flying" beneath the surface of the water. Flying fish use their pectoral fins to glide above the water's surface. Certain species of fish and birds are able to locomote in both air and water, two fluid media with very different properties.
Humboldt penguin swimming. Penguin wings evolved into short, strong flippers causing flightlessness. [1] This green turtle is about to break the surface for air at Kona, Hawaii. A flipper is a broad, flattened limb adapted for aquatic locomotion. It refers to the fully webbed, swimming appendages of aquatic vertebrates that are not fish.
Knowledge of surface ocean currents is essential in reducing costs of shipping, since traveling with them reduces fuel costs. In the wind powered sailing-ship era, knowledge of wind patterns and ocean currents was even more essential. Using ocean currents to help their ships into harbor and using currents such as the gulf stream to get back ...
'to swim') is any aquatic organism that can actively and persistently propel itself through a water column (i.e. swimming) without touching the bottom. Nektons generally have powerful tails and appendages (e.g. fins , pleopods , flippers or jet propulsion ) that make them strong enough swimmers to counter ocean currents , and have mechanisms ...