BBC Discovers Flying Penguins

Whoever said that penguins can’t fly?

The BBC will today screen remarkable footage of penguins flying as part of its new natural history series, Miracles of Evolution.

Camera crews discovered a colony of Adélie penguins while filming on King George Island, some 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands.

The programme is being presented by ex-Monty Python star Terry Jones, who said: “We’d been watching the penguins and filming them for days, without a hint of what was to come.

“But then the weather took a turn for the worse. It was quite amazing. Rather than getting together in a huddle to protect themselves from the cold, they did something quite unexpected, that no other penguins can do.”

BBC1 viewers will see the penguins not only take flight from the Antarctic wastes, but fly thousands of miles to the Amazonian rainforest to find winter sun.

Simply amazing.

(link via Radley Balko)

FILED UNDER: Environment, Humor, , , ,
Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. William d'Inger says:

    Technically speaking those were Patagonian pigs of the species Porcus flappis who, through convergent evolution, have grown quite similar looking to penguins, at least to the untrained eye.

  2. Tlaloc says:

    April fools day would be a hell of a lot funnier if people were smart the other 364 days a year.

    As it is, the day is just a cruel reminder.

  3. yetanotherjohn says:

    Personally, I liked their documentary on the spaghetti harvesters hand collecting the spaghetti from trees in Sicily.

  4. legion says:

    Don’t tell Berke Breathed!