Amazing: Flying Penguins Captured by the BBC with video

[Ichingcarpenter]

The program, part of the new BBC natural history series, Miracles of Evolution is being presented by ex-Monty Python star Terry Jones, who said:

" The film reveals nature’s stunning glory in exciting and unexpected ways, so much so that it defies belief…Not only does it create a vivid and emotional experience for the viewer, it also illustrates just how bold and simple Darwin’s idea of natural selection was."



As you can see the penguins on the right hand of the screen are taking off

They were filming a colony of Adélie penguins on King Geoerge Island, around 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands, when the weather took a turn for the worse and the penguins started to grow active.

You can see the amazing BBC commercial for the upcoming show here:

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/flying-penguins-discovered-and-captured-on-film/993

[Sanity Claws]

1. Are they near any spaghetti trees?

[jeff30997]

3. No but...

Elvis have been seen not too far from there.

[northzax]

2. i knew those bastards had just been faking it

flightless birds. pah. why would there be flightless birds?

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. The video is irrefutable evidence

I wonder if there is moments that the BBC caught where it shows
them dancing with happy feet?

[northzax]

6. and, it's on the internet

so you knows it's true.

[mikelgb]

4. good one

[atal]

7. when is 1st of April going to end

[jeff30997]

9. Tonight at midnight.

:)

[jeff30997]

8. And this chicken have been seen flying too:

[tanyev]

10. Opus's wish came true!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5123T0T6JRL._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

[jgraz]

11. That is INCREDIBLE!! Why didn't anyone discover this sooner???

:wow:

It's just amazing to see these beautiful birds in the air where they belong. Thanks to the BBC for bringing us such amazing footage.

[momster]

12. The Penguins are Ticked Off

They were hoping to keep this a secret at least until Dick Cheney's out of office.

Anyway, they're leaving with the dolphins any day now. So long and thanks for all the fish(y) stories.

[edhopper]

13. Did anyone notice

that was Terry Jones of Monty Python fame? Brilliant piece of film!

[and-justice-for-all]

14. They can not actually fly...

Their 'wings' are more flipper like and there is no way they could, at least currently', carry their weight.

Perhaps, in the far future they might just take to the sky, but I can not see them 'flying' as birds do at this point in time.

[htuttle]

15. They obviously had to learn to fly to get away from THESE things!

Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer

http://ops.tamu.edu/x075bb/discover/fool95.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotheaded_Naked_Ice_Borer

Aprile Pazzo was about to call it a day when she noticed that the penguins she was observing seemed strangely agitated. Pazzo, a wildlife biologist, was in Antarctica studying penguins at a remote, poorly explored area along the coast of the Ross Sea. "I was getting ready to release a penguin I had tagged when I heard a lot of squawking," says Pazzo. "When I looked up, the whole flock had sort of stampeded. They were waddling away faster than I'd ever seen them move."

Pazzo waded through the panicked birds to find out what was wrong. She found one penguin that hadn't fled. "It was sinking into the ice as if into quicksand," she says. Somehow the ice beneath the bird had melted; the penguin was waist deep in slush. Pazzo tried to help the struggling penguin. She grabbed its wings and pulled. With a heave she freed the bird. But the penguin wasn't the only thing she hauled from the slush. About a dozen small, hairless pink molelike creatures had clamped their jaws onto the penguin's lower body. Pazzo managed to capture one of the creatures -- the others quickly released their grip and vanished into the slush.

Over the next few months Pazzo caught several of the animals and watched others in the wild. She calls the strange new species hotheaded naked ice borers. "They're repulsive," says Pazzo. Adults are about six inches long, weigh a few ounces, have a very high metabolic rate -- their body temperature is 110 degrees -- and live in labyrinthine tunnels carved in the ice.

Perhaps their most fascinating feature is a bony plate on their forehead. Innumerable blood vessels line the skin covering the plate. The animals radiate tremendous amounts of body heat through their "hot plates," which they use to melt their tunnels in ice and to hunt their favorite prey: penguins.

A pack of ice borers will cluster under a penguin and melt the ice and snow it's standing on. When the hapless bird sinks into the slush, the ice borers attack, dispatching it with bites of their sharp incisors. They then carve it up and carry its flesh back to their burrows, leaving behind only webbed feet, a beak, and some feathers. "They travel through the ice at surprisingly high speeds, " says Pazzo, "much faster than a penguin can waddle."

Pazzo's discovery may also help solve a long-standing Antarctic mystery: What happened to the heroic polar explorer Philippe Poisson, who disappeared in Antarctica without a trace in 1837? "I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a big pack of ice borers got him," says Pazzo. "I've seen what these things do to emperor penguins -- it isn't pretty -- and emperors can be as much as four feet tall. Poisson was about 5 foot 6. To the ice borers, he would have looked like a big penguin."

-- Discover Magazine

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Marvellous! I'd heard of that, but never read the article before

I love some of the letters - especially this one:

While this shell-less snail (class Gastropoda; subclass Pulmonata) measures only four to six inches long, convergent evolution has bestowed on it dentition identical to that of the great white shark. Additionally, this mollusk is capable of oozing forward with hideous speed, being clocked at 1.3 meters per hour during an attack.

Hunting in packs, the gastropods prefer to prey on the Northwest spotted owl, which the slugs stalk by smearing unspeakable slime trails on tree branches that the owl cannot then firmly grasp. As the slugs hunker in ambush, the unsuspecting bird (order Strigiformes) lands and suddenly finds itself upside-down and swinging like a pendulum from the buttered perch, talons gripping in astonishment. As is well known, the owl cannot initiate flight from this position and is thus forced to dangle stoically as the herd of maddened snails rushes in, fangs flinging spit.

It is the horror of every nature walker to come upon the disgusting aftermath of this plunder--two knobby owl legs suspended from a tree limb, a beak and feathers on the woodland floor, the forest serenity shattered by the belches of satiated slugs.

:rofl:

[AngryOldDem]

16. As KO said...

...the fact that Terry Jones was involved should have been the first clue.

Funny as hell, though.

[Tesha]

17. The date mght have been a tip-off as well. (NT)

[Sequoia]

19. Darn, I was so excited at first. Should've known.,

I had to recall my email, so I hope it works. Otherwise they'll think I'm a ding bat.

[Sequoia]

18. And every mother's child is going to spy, to see if reindeer really

know how to fly up next!

This is terrific! Thanks.