![]() This choreography between birds, ice and climate has taken millions of years to align, and it has taken humans only a few hundred years to cause an inconsolable rift. Chicks must stay out of the water until their feathers become waterproof to survive in the icy waters. Emperor penguins are especially vulnerable to a changing, warming climate because they and their chicks depend on stable sea ice that must be landfast from April through to January. They adapted to life along the edges of this polar desert in the so‑called ‘Goldilocks Zone’ – as Stéphanie Jenouvrier writes in Antarctic Resolution – with feathers that become waterproof as they grow. The 18 species of flightless birds that exist in the southern hemisphere today evolved within the last three million years. It is thought that the oldest ancestors of penguins first appeared 60 million years ago: before the appearance of the ice sheet that now covers Antarctica, the world’s largest desert. Edited by Giulia Foscari / UNLESS, Lars Müller Publishers, 2021
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |