What is the role of Natural Selection vs. luck in the survival of baby Emperor Penguins? It looks like Natural Selection kills off the stupid, weak, old and sick. Fate kills off those whose mommies get eaten by leopard seals. Either way, they all die in the end. I don’t understand the difference between Natural Selection and luck. Which is it that gets you eaten by a leopard seal? Which is it that puts you on the outside of the pack when the winter storm comes? Which is it that gave you a little more to eat than the other guy so that you had enough to hold you over for the four month fast? This movie preached both natural selection and luck by the looks of it. I don’t believe in either Natural Selection from an evolutionary perspective or luck. I believe in a Creator God who sustains and maintains them and allows them to die in His own time. If His eye is on the sparrow, I know He’s watching over those penguins.
Now for my Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of the March of the Penguins: as told by as told by Morgan Freeman and me.
This is the Emperor Penguin story of their long 70 mile walks of “love” over the ice of Antarctica. It is presented as if the penguins were a tribe of nomadic people living on the southernmost continent of the world. Several penguins will not survive. It started out like Romeo and Juliet love story for the masses, but it ended up as a tragedy. Some of you will get that. The Destination is the same every year but their path is different every time. It is 58 degrees below zero when the sun is out.
It hasn’t always been like this - apparently at one time Antarctica was a tropical lush green paradise, with ground cover, densely forested, and teaming with life. At least that’s what Morgan tells us. Trees and grasses were replaced with ice. (How do they know this and who has seen it, I’d like to know?)
“The original inhabitants all died or moved on long ago. Well almost all of them. Legend has it that one tribe, stayed behind.” Is this the stubborn Emperor Penguin tribe of Antarctica or are they the tribe from the sea? They spend 8 to 9 months on the ice, but Morgan claims that their home is really in the sea. Which is it?
“Perhaps they thought this change in the weather was only temporary.” Does this statement make any sense? If the continental drift occurs at a millimeter per year rate, at least that is what they told me in earth science class, how then could these “thinking penguins” have thought the cold weather to be temporary. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Morgan goes on to say they have made their home here on the coldest darkest driest windiest place on earth. First he says millions of years, and then later he states their mating walk has been going on for thousands of years. Quite a difference in times here don’t you agree? I smell inconsistencies.
It’s a story of survival life over death but wait, there’s more, it’s also a story of “love”. How beautiful. Like most love stories it begins with an act of “utter foolishness”. What? I want to see the utter foolishness. Morgan never does explain what the utter foolishness is.
The Emperor penguin is a BIRD who lives in the sea, but not really, he lives on the ice and feeds from the sea. Morgan tells us this bird does not fly. Oh, maybe this bird is in a transition stage here. Maybe he is evolving into a mammal like a dolphin. Or from bird to fish – but wouldn’t that be devolving? Or, maybe because he walks the 70 miles to his breeding ground, he is in transition stage and will evolve into the marathon runner…Boston species I hope, they’re my favorite.
This trek that begins in March at the beginning of winter is Natural selection’s way of insuring that only the strongest that make the journey will live out this love story. “Maybe they are guided by some internal compass” – that part might be the truth. Or maybe God has created them with a really good memory. Every one of them arrives back at the place it was born.
Morgan makes it sound like there is some almost mystical drive that brings these birds 70 miles in to the center of this ice block, and then says that it is because the ice here is thickest and thus lasting longer when the ice melt occurs. Has evolution taught them this or has God given them the basic intelligence to carry out self preservation?
“We don’t really know what they are looking for in a partner. We only know they are looking.” HUH? “We also know when they found what they’re looking for. They are monogamous sort of they only mate with one partner per year.” Huh? Did somebody write a new dictionary? I guess this is the new worldly meaning for the word monogamous and not the Biblical version of the word.
Females fight over males for mates. O.k., this is a lot like dating as I remember it. So in their quest for a mate there are some similarities. This is the great love story that only lasts a season. Yes they really do resemble the Hollywood version of love and monogamy. Yes, here they are certainly like worldly, sinful man in that respect.
Morgan goes on to say that for the next 8 months the paired penguin couple will participate in an ancient and complicated affair. Yup, that sounds just like Hollywood too. “If successful they will have an egg to tend to, and the brutal winter will do everything in its power to destroy the egg.” This statement is an attempt to give nature a human-like status in its description, thereby lessoning man’s status as the image of God.
“The lone penguin will have no chance to make it on his own. He will simply fade away, absorbed by the great whiteness.” Does this mean that the others survive because they are fit or because they are many? The group is said to be “like another organism altogether, when it huddles for protection from the severe weather.”
Such concern is shown for the tiny beating heart that is in the shell. Not just from the “parents” but also from Morgan. These penguins appear to be more caring then many people do about their off spring at this stage of development. Funny Morgan speaks about the tiny beating heart of the penguin in the shell, yet life in human women is said to be a non-life at this stage of development.
“In natures most incredible and endearing role reversals, it is the male penguin who will stay with the egg for more then two months”, as the female goes off to pursue her career. No not quite, it is to eat before she dies.
The males go without food for over 125 days, all for the survival of their offspring. Maybe a better title would be Stand of the Male Emperor Penguin. Many males simply succumb by this point to the 3 months of fasting. Usually it is the older males who fall to the hunger. There are still many days of hunger to go.
When the females walk back to the water it is now a longer trek because the Winter has pushed the new ice edge further from where it was when they came aboard the ice. It was pretty cool to learn that they can hold their breath for over 15 minutes and can reach 1700 foot depths. When the leopard seal kills a mother (female penguin), it takes two lives; the life of the mother and the chick that will never be fed.
“The male penguin at the brink of starvation may have to leave his CHILD if the mother does not return soon or he will die.” I love the use of “Mother”, “Father”, “Child”, “Baby”, “Family”, as though these penguins were human. These human labels are used as though the penguin had an emotional family bond. That rhetoric might work if Morgan didn’t say the “father” driven by hunger may have to abandon his little baby if mommy doesn’t return soon.
“But miraculously, there is one secret weapon against the chick’s death from hunger, a milky substance that the male has been holding for this sole purpose.” It has been stored in his throat for this very moment. This will keep the chick for a day or two.
“The mothers step up their return as if sensing the urgency. (Or maybe they just have more strength from eating.) The mother sees her chick for the first time and at last the family is together.” How touching. I do not believe there is any emotion between the penguins involved here as the narrator tries to make it sound like there is. With the soft music it’s almost like a Christmas homecoming on movie.
Now, the little baby gets transferred from the feet of the father and Daddy waddles to the sea to eat. This is just after Daddy and baby sing a little song together so that they will be able to recognize one another by call, when Daddy returns from a hard days work on the sea. The dear “Daddy severs the bond and heads to sea. Of course this is not easy to do.”
Now it has been over 4 months that dear ole Dad has gone without food. Up to half of the males body weight has gone and he still has to trek 70 miles back to the sea. The chick is now left with the female to face the winter storms. Some chicks may not survive the first storm. The females find their dead chicks. I’m wondering how the females find their chicks. I wonder because earlier Morgan stated that the penguins only recognize their chicks by their call and not by sight.
For the mother the loss of the chick is “unbearable”. She then goes to her psychologist and has a counseling session to elevate the emotional trauma. Having lost her own chick she copes with her loss by attempting to steal another chick. In late August the females who have not lost their chicks leave to feed again, without even saying good bye. I guess now the chicks are old enough the bond has been severed? Apparently age plays a factor in emotional ties in the penguin species.
When the male returns and finds his chick the reunion is a “joyful one’. How they can tell it’s joyful they do not say, just that it is a joyful reunion. For the next several months the male and female take turns going back and forth retrieving food that is then regurgitated to the chick. “Eventually the family can spend some time together.” Father sits by the fire smoking his pipe, and junior rides his tricycle around while mother cooks fish stew.
By November the ocean is a couple hundred yards off the breeding ground and the “family” is about to breakup and go on their separate ways. The tribe jumps in the water (their real home) and will probably never see each other again. The chicks are left now to fend for themselves. How wonderful this love story of our distant cousins, these birds of the sea. The birds spend the next four years at sea then in their fifth year they return to write their own love story.
And they all live happily after ever.
In a nutshell: melodramatic, emotionally manipulative dribble. Eighty minutes and seventeen seconds of my life I will never be able to recover.
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