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The physiology of underwater diving is the physiological adaptations to diving of air-breathing vertebrates that have returned to the ocean from terrestrial lineages. They are a diverse group that include sea snakes, sea turtles, the marine iguana, saltwater crocodiles, penguins, pinnipeds, cetaceans, sea otters, manatees and dugongs.
Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae (/ s f ɪ ˈ n ɪ s ɪ d iː,-d aɪ /) of the order Sphenisciformes (/ s f ɪ ˈ n ɪ s ə f ɔːr m iː z /). [4] They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator.
Due to their warm environment, Galápagos penguins have developed techniques to stay cool. The feathers on their back, flippers, and head are black, and they have a white belly and a stripe looping from their eyes down to their neck and chin. Each penguin keeps only one mate, [5] and breeds year-round.
The Galapagos Penguin: A Study of Adaptations for Life in an Unpredictable Environment. P. Dee Boersma , also known as Dee Boersma (born 1946) is a conservation biologist and professor at the University of Washington , where she is Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science. [ 1 ]
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.
The king penguin feeds its chicks by eating fish, digesting it slightly, and regurgitating the food into the chick's mouth. Because of their large size, king penguin chicks take 14–16 months before they are ready to go to sea. This is markedly different from smaller penguins, who rear their chicks through a single summer when food is plentiful.
The emperor penguin breeds in the coldest environment of any bird species; air temperatures may reach −40 °C (−40 °F), and wind speeds may reach 144 km/h (89 mph). Water temperature is a frigid −1.8 °C (28.8 °F), which is much lower than the emperor penguin's average body temperature of 39 °C (102 °F).
The flightless penguins are almost all located in the Southern Hemisphere (the only exception is the equatorial Galapagos penguin), with the greatest concentration located on and around Antarctica. Four of the eighteen penguin species live and breed on the mainland and its close offshore islands.