Johnnie Ray, age 12, of Mars Hill, N.C., for his question:
How can a penguin hatch her eggs on the ice?
There are seventeen varieties of penguin and each has a nesting plan of its own. The penguin cousins range all the way from the little blue penguin of Australia, who is only one foot tall, to the giant emperor penguin who is three feet tall. Most of the penguins nest on rocky isles or jagged beaches. Only the emperor and the adele penguin live entirely on the ice covered continent of Antarctica: So only they have the problem of hatching their eggs on ice.
Eggs, of course, need warmth in order to hatch. The parent penguins are well aware of this fact. Between them, the emperor and his wife, who is of course the empress, never allow their precious egg to touch the ice. Yet they build no nest. The job of hatching an egg is so difficult under these circumstances that there is never more than one egg at a time. The young chick who is, of course, a prince or a princess, is always an only child.
The big emperors may weigh 90 pounds =apiece and most of the time they stand very erect with regal dignity. Like all penguins, however, the emperors are full of fun and at the first sign of a game all royal dignity is forgotten. Their bodies are covered with short furry feathers and. a warm layer of fat. The skin on the chest is loose and hangs down in a warm flap which almost covers the wide flat feet. The empress holds her precious egg on top of her flat feet and. tucks it under this feathery flap of warm feathers, fat and skin.
She can even waddle a few stps with her egg on her feet, But from time to time, along comes his royal majesty and takes his turn with the egg. The fond parents carefully shift the egg from one pair of feet to the other, ‑And both help to tuck it under the built‑in blanket. The emperor's job of nesting on ice is all the more remarkable because the precious egg is laid. in the bitter cold of the long Antarctic night.
The princeling stays in his cozy cradle for some time after he is hatched. He pokes his head out for food and to take a look at the white world around. him. The parent birds feed on fish, shrimp and squid. The food is partly digested and Junior can dig a meal out from the crop of either of his parents.
Most other penguins build. nests on the ground. The wise parents know that ice and snow may melt in the spring and swamp their nests. To guard against this, the nest is built on a foundation of pebbles. When young Mr. Penguin goes courting he takes along not a box of candy, not a poveg, but a pebble. His fair lady accepts the beau who brings plenty of the proper pebbles to build a safe nest.
Most penguins are birds of the southern polar regions. In spite of the bitter hardship of their surroundings they are the happiest and most cheerful of animals. They are very friendly and often mistake humans for visiting penguins. Few people venture into their cold territory, so the charming, fun‑loving creatures have not yet learned to fear man‑the‑hunter.