Penguins

[Botch]

Just watched a show on PBS about penguins, it ended and Dish won't let me backtrack to find the title. It was a documentary, kinda humorous, but biologically accurate.
Penguins have been given one of the worst gigs in Evolution! They have to walk 120 miles inland, in Antarctica, to mate and have one egg. If they fumble it for just a few seconds (the egg), it freezes and that year's chick dies.
One spouse has to walk back to the ocean to feed, while the remaining spouse has to let the egg/chick sit on its feet, covered with feathers, and regurgitates the chick's "meals" for the four months it takes the spouse to get to the ocean, feed and gorge, and then walk back.
They feed the chick, do some snuggle-bunnies, and then the other spouse starts walking 120 miles (that one hasn't eaten in four months). Feed, dodge seals and orcas, then walk back. Again. Huddle when the blizzards blow through, -80 F and 70 mph winds.
Apparently, a chick that loses its parent won't be taken in by any other adult, until it reaches a certain age, and then all the parents who've lost their chick try to kidnap them, sometimes resulting in the chick's death.

Penguins are cute as hell, but it would suck to be one.

 

[Akula]

When March of the Penguins was popular, our family had a running joke. "OR THEY DIE." Every time the penguins did something, you'd have Morgan Freeman explain failure meant death. So it would be "If the mother is eaten by an orca, she won't return to feed her chick, and the chick would die." So we even started joking about the History Channel winter trucking show, calling it March of the Ice Road Truckers... "The truck will make it across the ice OR THEY DIE."