This is a story of outstanding endurance in the coldest, windiest, driest place in the world. It tells of a creature that employs strategies for survival while blizzards rage and temperatures drop below minus sixty degrees Centigrade, all the time caring for the single egg that carries its future chick. This remarkable creature is the Emperor Penguin, the largest of all penguins.
Most Emperor Penguins never walk on land. They leave the sea in March and trudge across the ice for up to 200 kilometres to reach their breeding colonies.
In May the female lays a single egg which the male immediately scoops up with his bill from between her feet and places it on his own feet. Now the female is free to set off across the ice to the sea leaving the male to take care of the egg during the intense cold of the Antarctic winter.
Soon after the egg hatches in July the female returns to feed the chick and relieve the male who now sets out for the sea to feed again.
