Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it helped these emperor penguins take the most adorable selfies. Australian Antarctic expeditioner Eddie Gault left the camera on ice when visiting the Auster Rookery, a penguin colony near the Australian Mawson research station.
Penguins are naturally curious birds. A pair of them found the camera, and accidently turned it over. In the video, one can see one penguin approach the camera, somehow flick it up so that it’s focused on its face, and then a second penguin joins. They both curiously stare down at the lens before losing interest. One of the penguins is even saying something. Probably they are discussing the curious object, which may have seemed like an alien device to them.
Emperor penguins live in Antarctica, where they can face blizzards of up to 200 kilometers per hour. They are the largest penguin species in the world, standing 45 inches tall and weighing up to 40 kgs. They live in colonies of a few hundred to over 20,000 pairs.
Animals like humans can be vain. Enough documentaries prove that. This latest video might be an instance of the tuxedo clad birds having a narcissist moment for themselves. But otherwise too, these isolated species has been humanised often in movies. Films like Happy Feet and Madagascar take this further.
Image Credit: Movie – Happy Feet
Thankfully for Eddie Gault the camera was already rolling when the penguins found it. He will be spared from the legal complications that faced David Slater. In the popular ‘monkey selfie’ case of 2011. A male crested black macaque named Naruto took a picture of himself using a camera that belonged to the wildlife photographer. He left a camera set up in such a way that it would take a selfie if the monkeys began playing with it, and behold, Naruto took a selfie. In 2015, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued Slater for damages, alleging that the human had infringed on Naruto’s copyright. The case was settled about two years later, with Slater agreeing to donate 25 percent of proceeds from the “monkey selfies” to Indonesian charities that protect crested macaques.
And this cute selfie video may be a message to the world against global warming. The species has been threatened by melting ice and polluted oceans. Their life story is an arduous one where the females trudge for long kilometres to find food in the distant shores while the males guard the eggs in chilly storms. The mothers are finding it increasingly difficult to find sufficient food as the ocean is affected by pollutants.
A 2009 satellite-image-based survey found 595,000 individuals on the continent. But because climate change is expected to transform the landscape and dramatically reduce the extent of their sea ice habitat, the species is listed as near threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
So, while we may adore and find fascination in the recent selfie video, let it also be a reminder that the planet is shared by other beautiful creatures who may be suffering due to human excesses.
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