Species Saturday Vol 11: Penguins the Size of Humans

Well now we are officially talking about Christmas, it would be rude not to talk about some of the more Christmassy animals for Species Saturday. And we are starting with penguins!

🐧 All penguin species live in the Southern Hemisphere (except special ones that have been good enough to be selected for an internship at the North Pole for Christmas)
🐧 A lot of penguins live in cold temperatures, but you do find penguin populations living in more temperate climates such as Melbourne Australia or Otago New Zealand (I've seen penguins at both these locations and it's so magical!)
🐧 There are 18 species of penguins, but some scientists disagree on whether some species should be split, so there could be up to 21 species if this happens
🐧 The largest penguin is the Emperor, standing at about 4ft tall (pretty cute), but fossil evidence suggests that penguins from 60 million years ago were as tall as humans at 5ft 10.

It's pretty amazing trying to picture what Earth would have been like with giant penguins (and the giant sloths we learned about!) roaming around. I sincerely hope generations to come dont have to imagine our penguins in their heads 💙

Info sourced from Treehugger