The feathers work almost like a dry suit. Trapping a layer of air to insulate their bodies and keep them exceptionally warm, even as they swim into water that's below freezing temps.
They can't dive as deep though. Air is compressibly by the quickly increasing water pressure, so the cold will sap their body heat faster as a penguin dives deeper.
Fat isn't compressible, so seals don't suffer the same problem.
It died peacefully after a life that was longer and happier than average, surrounded by loved ones, and having come to terms with its mortality beforehand.
I knew they were birds so of course they have feathers but for some reasons I thought they would look more like seals with lots of fat.
They have that too, but less of it.
The feathers work almost like a dry suit. Trapping a layer of air to insulate their bodies and keep them exceptionally warm, even as they swim into water that's below freezing temps.
They can't dive as deep though. Air is compressibly by the quickly increasing water pressure, so the cold will sap their body heat faster as a penguin dives deeper.
Fat isn't compressible, so seals don't suffer the same problem.
How disrespectful to yoga pants
It's true though, the pants can push it into a different shape, but not make it smaller.
If the water is bellow freezing temps wouldn't that mean that the water is ice? Or can it go bellow freezing in the ocean because of the salt?
Yes.
Ocean water can also be supercritical. You can find videos on youtube of under-ice water flash-freezing out from a nucleation site.
poor penguin =(
It died peacefully after a life that was longer and happier than average, surrounded by loved ones, and having come to terms with its mortality beforehand.
Thank you
Did they hurt the penguin to get that sample?
His condition is stable
Death is the most stable condition.
Baseline obs haven't changed in a hundred years
This is a very old sample of penguin skin in a museum. But to answer your question, yes, they killed the bird.
Not before torturing him first. How else would he give up his insulating secrets.
Is it going to be OK?
Yes they just borrowed its skin for a while, it was happy to be involved
It would be interesting to know their internal temperature at -60°C ambient.
I bet the locals will give you looks coming all the way to Antarctica to put thermocouples up penguin butts, but hey, science.
The locals on Antarctica are all scientists. I'm sure they would understand.
I'm pretty sure they are already doing it for fun anyway. The more the merrier!
So the black coat is actually fluffy?
Hypothetically, how many penguins would one have to sneak out of the zoo in order to fashion themselves a penguin coat?
Nice try Cruella
So do we have extreme weather gear based on similar principles and layout, or have we discovered a configuration that works better?
I think it would be too fragile for most purposes. Unless you can make missing feathers grow back like a living penguin it would wear out quite fast.
Most wearable insulation works pretty similar, right?
Its a layer of air, trapped in some kind of matrix, so that it can't move, with some sort of inner and outer shell.
Not yet but hopefully soon because penguin coats are really expensive.
Ever Mr Burns has to make do with real gorilla chest: