Emperor penguins are the largest penguin species and the only penguins that spend the winter on the Antarctic ice. They breed in the winter and hatch one chick at a time. In order fo find fish to feed her chick, a mother must travel up to 50 miles to the open sea. When she returns to the colony with her catch, she regurgitates it for her chick. Meanwhile, the father incubates the egg and keeps the chick warm once it hatches. Later, when the chick is bigger, both the mother and father must go to the sea for food.

Emperor penguins face several dangers along their journey to the sea, including leopard seals and difficult ice crossings. The latter problem has been exacerbated in some places recently, as several enormous icebergs have wedged into the ice and made the penguins' trip even longer and more arduous than before.

Students will learn about emperor penguins' habitat and behaviors through Web sites such as National Geographic Creature Feature: Emperor Penguins and will illustrate a map to show what they have learned. They will view pictures of icebergs that are affecting penguin colonies and consider what impacts these icebergs might have on the penguins. They will conclude by writing paragraphs describing the maps that they have illustrated.

Geography, life sciences

Standard 8: "The characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems on Earth's surface"
Standard 18: "How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future"

Two to three hours

• Computer with Internet access
• A handout showing a very small part of the Antarctic coastline (Draw the coastline yourself—it can be an uneven line across the page, but make the sea portion take up about two-thirds of the page. Label the land versus the sea and make a key showing one kilometer equal to one inch.)

Students will

• view pictures of and sketch emperor penguins, leopard seals, and Antarctic ice;
• read and answer questions about emperor penguins;
• illustrate a map of the Antarctic coastline with features of emperor penguin habitat;
• discuss the consequences of increasing temperatures in the Antarctic;
• see pictures of icebergs changing position along the Antarctic coast;
• discuss the icebergs' potential and actual impacts on penguin colonies; and
• write paragraphs describing the maps that they have illustrated.

Have a student identify Antarctica on a world map. Ask students to name some animals that live in Antarctica. Make sure they know that penguins can only be found in the Southern Hemisphere, primarily in Antarctica; there are no penguins at the North Pole!

Have students go to the following Web pages to see pictures of coastal Antarctica. As they look at the pictures, ask each student to sketch an adult penguin, a penguin chick, a leopard seal, and a picture of the Antarctic ice.

National Geographic Creature Feature: Emperor Penguins [Note: students can watch the video, too, if your Internet connection is not too slow and if the computers have RealPlayer or Windows Media]
McClarens Abroad
Australian Antarctic Division
PBS: Under Antarctic Ice (notice the ice in the center; penguins are skilled at crossing ice like this)

Have students return to National Geographic Creature Feature: Emperor Penguins and link to "Fun Facts." Ask them to read this page and answer these questions, either in writing or in a class discussion (if they write their answers, discuss them as a class afterwards):

• What are some of the clever adaptations emperor penguins use to survive?
• Where do they spend the winter, and what do they do during this season?
• Who takes care of the chicks after they hatch? How?
• How do the chicks get food when they are very young?
• When do the chicks begin to fish for their own food?

Give students the Antarctic coastline handout that you have made and explain what it shows.

Read each of the following points to the class. In parenthesis are instructions for students to draw items on their maps as you read to them. Do this as a class, and give students a minute to draw each item:

• Emperor penguins live in large colonies ranging in size from a few hundred to 20,000 pairs. The colonies live on ice up to 50 miles from the sea. (Ask students to draw a partial colony of emperor penguins. To simplify, it is OK if they just draw a few penguins rather than hundreds. The penguins should appear relatively small on the map.)
• In order to eat, the penguins have to walk to the sea and swim for fish. (Have students draw the route the penguins will take from the colony to the sea.)
• When they have chicks, the father cares for them at first while the mother goes to sea looking for food. Later, both parents must go fishing because chicks are so big and hungry.
• Dangers lurk along their journey, including difficult terrain—although they are expert ice climbers—and leopard seals. (Have students draw some rough ice, as they have seen in the photograph, and a leopard seal near or in the water.)
• If both parents do not return with food, the chick will die of starvation.

Ask students what might happen if some of the Antarctic ice began to melt. They should think about melting ice that they have seen. How does it look? What does it sound like? They will probably realize that melting ice cracks, breaks, and changes shape and size. This happens whether it is an ice cube in a glass, a thawing ice puddle in early spring, or an Antarctic ice shelf.

Write "global warming" on the board. Ask students if they know what this term means. Explain that this phenomenon is going on all around the world and is even affecting Antarctica. Every year, scientists are noticing more signs of melting ice in the Antarctic. When temperatures rise, the ice that forms an ice shelf (a vast area of ice attached to the Antarctic continent) begins to crack and break. Sometimes, huge icebergs will break off the larger ice shelves. This has happened recently, and now some very large icebergs are floating around the Antarctic seas.

Have students go to Enormous Icebergs Imperil Penguins Heading For Antarctica Breeding Grounds, scroll down a little bit, and link to "Images" on the right side of the screen. Ask students to look at the images as you provide this description:

• Notice that the first five images were taken from December 2000 to February 2001—about a two month period. The last image is from December 2001.
• The dark areas are water, and the white areas are ice. The ice at the top is land, and there are many icebergs floating in the water.
• Icebergs B-15 and C-16 can be seen in the first photo (December 11, 2000). B-15 is enormous—it is the size of Cyprus, an island nation in the eastern Mediterranean which students can locate on a map.
• Notice how both icebergs change position over time. B-15 moves in from the left and wedges into the land. C-16 changes position and becomes "stuck" in the ice that increases over time.
• By December 9, 2001, there is a lot more ice, and both icebergs are right up against the land.

Explain that penguin colonies live on the land shown in the upper parts of these images. Ask students to describe how the penguins' access to the sea would have changed over the period of time when these pictures were taken. They should realize that the penguin colonies living on this land would have had a harder time reaching the sea in the later photos. Also explain that when icebergs butt up against land in this manner, they not only create larger distances for the penguins to cover, but they crush the ice and make it much more difficult (and sometimes impossible) for the penguins to walk and jump over.

Have students draw an iceberg on their maps. They may do this in another color, such as blue, so that it is clearly visible on the map. The iceberg should be close to the land, like the one they have just seen in the photographs.

Have students look at their maps and discuss difficulties that the penguins might face now that the iceberg has moved into place against the land. Explain that the penguins in the area shown in the photographs have had some serious hardships. Many of them have died, and they have raised far fewer young than in the years before the icebergs arrived.

Ask students to write paragraphs describing the elements on their maps. They should describe the penguins and their breeding and feeding behaviors, the iceberg and how it got there, and the potential consequences of the iceberg for the penguins.

Have students write stories entitled "A Year in the Life of an Emperor Penguin." Their stories should describe the life of an emperor penguin as it goes through a full year, either as a chick or as an adult. They should make sure to include a description of how the penguins get their food, what the weather and ice are like, the dangers they face, and the unexpected factors that might affect their lives, such as icebergs.

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0229817.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Australian Antarctic Division
Enormous Icebergs Imperil Penguins Heading For Antarctica Breeding Grounds
McClarens Abroad
National Geographic Creature Feature: Emperor Penguins
PBS: Under Antarctic Ice