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African Penguin — printable fact sheet
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African Penguin
Spheniscus demersus
The African penguin is the only penguin that breeds on the African mainland and its islands, and it brays like a donkey — hence its older name, jackass penguin. The bare pink patch above each eye is a radiator: in heat, blood is shunted into the supraorbital gland region and the…
Did you know?
- Despite living in Africa's warmth, African Penguins have densely packed feathers and a layer of fat to keep them warm in cold ocean waters.
- Every African penguin has a unique pattern of black chest spots, as individual as a fingerprint, and researchers use photographs of them to identify birds without tagging. The famous Boulders Beach colony near Cape Town was founded in 1982 by just two pairs and grew into a suburb of thousands of birds nesting among houses. Artificial nest boxes are now deployed on the islands as a substitute for the guano burrows that were shovelled away over a century ago.
What I learned
Draw the african penguin
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