72. Don’t judge a penguin by it’s cover

This evening I enjoyed a Merdeka dinner (today is Malaysia’s independence day) with my colleagues at one of their houses.

In the background the kids put on Nat Geo wild and were watching a documentary about penguins.

Now, penguins are pretty funny animals to watch so soon all of the adults in the room were also focused on the show.

There are a few things that I really love about penguins:

1. The way they waddle when they’re walking
2. The way that they glide along the ground to move faster
3. The way that they shoot out of the water back onto the ice
4. That they take it in turns to be on the outside of the group during a bitterly cold storm
5. The way that they carry their eggs with them everywhere they go to keep them warm

To me not only were they funny looking creatures, the last two reasons also indicated to their “humanity” to one another. I always admired the fact that they sacrifice themselves for the group by rotating who is on the outside during a storm.

I was wrong.

Penguins can be pretty cruel too.

In the documentary that I saw today a chick had been orphaned after a Leopard seal ate its mother.

No worries, I thought, though it’s sad the little one has lost their mother, I’m sure the group will rally around them.

That didn’t happen. The poor chick was shunned everywhere they went.

Worse than that, every time they went near to an adult penguin and cried out, the adult would physically shoo the chick away.

They didn’t take the chick into their warm embrace, they didn’t simply ignore them, the pushed the chick away.

That’s the moment I realised that penguins aren’t the funny walking, caring creatures I thought they were. It made me a little sad.