Cephalopodcast

Today is National Peguin Awareness Day. The official declaration is over at the Peguin Geek blog.

Unfortunately, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Penguin Cam is currently offline, so you can’t celebrate that way. But they are working on a new exhibit which should be open in March. In the meantime, try the other links below.

Penguins are birds. They have feathers, beaks and wings, and they lay eggs. Their closest relatives are other fish-eating seabirds: albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters.

There are currently 17 species of penguins. They range in size from the small two-pound (1 kg), 16-inch (41 cm) little blue penguin to the large 84-pound (38 kg), 51-inch (130 cm) emperor penguin. They’ve adapted to environments as different as Antarctic ice fields and the tropical Galápagos islands. Yet all penguins share their ancestors’ trait: they’re at home in the ocean.

• Penguin Geek: National Penguin Awareness Day
• Zapatopi: Penguicons
• MBAq: Become a Penguinologist
• Wikipedia: Penguin
• SeaWorld Education: Penguins
• Defenders of Wildlife: Adopt a Penguin
• Penguin Caffinated Peppermints

UPDATE: I composed this post rather quickly and did not do as much link research as I had hoped to do. If I had, I might have also discovered these other remarkable penguin Web sites:

• Penguin Science understanding penguin response to climate and ecosystem change (via kottke)
• Penguin of the Day: View a different penguin every day! You can also see the last week’s worth of penguins, just in case you missed one! (via Nicola Rickett’s Antarctic blog)
• Real-time penguin blogging with Viola Toniolo at Antarctic Journal: I’m working on my graduate research project on the foraging ecology of Adelie Penguins
• Penguinsland Blog: a blog for cute pictures, fun videos, news, and information about penguins