Content
- The penguin's digestive system
- What do penguins eat?
- How do penguins hunt?
- The penguin, an animal that needs to be protected
The penguin is one of the best known non-flying seabirds due to its friendly appearance, although 16 to 19 species can be included under this term.
Adapted to freezing climates, the penguin is distributed throughout the southern hemisphere, specifically on the coasts of Antarctica, New Zealand, South Australia, South Africa, the Subantarctic Islands and Argentine Patagonia.
If you want to find out more about this fantastic bird, in this article by Animal Expert we tell you about the penguin's feeding.
The penguin's digestive system
Penguins assimilate all the nutrients they get from the various foods they eat thanks to their digestive system, whose functioning does not vary excessively from human digestive physiology.
The penguin's digestive tract is formed by the following structures:
- Mouth
- Esophagus
- stomach
- Proventricle
- Gizzard
- intestine
- Liver
- pancreas
- Cloaca
Another important aspect of the penguin's digestive system is a gland that we also find in other seabirds, which is responsible for eliminate excess salt ingested with sea water and therefore makes it unnecessary to drink fresh water.
The penguin may be 2 days without eating and this period of time does not affect any structure of your digestive tract.
What do penguins eat?
Penguins are considered animals carnivorous heterotrophs, which feed mainly on krill as well as small fish and squid, however, the species belonging to the genus Pygoscelis base their feeding mostly on plankton.
We can say that regardless of genus and species, all penguins complement their diet through plankton and the ingestion of cephalopods, small marine invertebrates.
How do penguins hunt?
Due to adaptive processes, the penguin's wings have actually become fins with strong bones and rigid joints, which allow for a technique of wing driven dive, giving the penguin its main means of mobility in the water.
The hunting behavior of seabirds has been the subject of numerous studies, so some researchers at the National Polar Research Institute in Tokyo have placed cameras on 14 penguins from Antarctica and were able to observe these animals. are extremely fast, in 90 minutes they can ingest 244 krills and 33 small fish.
When the penguin wants to capture the krill, it does so by swimming upwards, a behavior that is not arbitrary, as it seeks to deceive its other prey, the fish. Once the krill is captured, the penguin quickly changes direction and heads to the bottom of the sea where it can hunt several small fish.
The penguin, an animal that needs to be protected
The population of the different species of penguins is decreasing with increasing frequency due to the multiple factors among which we can highlight the oil spill, habitat destruction, hunting and climate.
It is a protected species, in fact, to study these species for whatever scientific purpose it needs the approval and supervision of various organisms, however, activities such as illegal hunting or factors such as global warming continue to threaten this beautiful seabird.
