The king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) is the second largest species of penguin, smaller than but somewhat similar in appearance to the emperor penguin. King penguins mainly eat lanternfish, squid, and krill. On foraging trips, king penguins repeatedly dive to over 100 metres (300 ft), and have been recorded at depths greater than 300 metres (1,000 ft). Predators of the king penguin include giant petrels, skuas, the snowy sheathbill, the leopard seal, and the orca. The king penguin breeds on the subantarctic islands at the northern reaches of Antarctica, South Georgia, southern Argentina, and other temperate islands of the region. It also lives on Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean and the Falkland Islands. This bird was exploited commercially in the past for its blubber, oil, meat, and feathers. Today it is fully protected.
Taxonomy In 1778, the English illustrator John Frederick Miller included a hand-coloured engraving of the king penguin in his Icones animalium et plantarum. He coined the binomial name Aptenodytes patagonica and specified the type locality as the Mari antarctico, the Antarctic Ocean. The locality was restricted to South Georgia by Gregory Mathews in 1911.
Purported subspecies The International Ornithologists' Union considers the species monotypic, recognizing no subspecies. However, some taxonomic authorities recognize two subspecies, A. p. patagonicus and A. p. halli; in this system, patagonicus is found in the South Atlantic and halli in the South Indian Ocean (at the Kerguelen Islands, Crozet Islands, Prince Edward Islands, and Heard Island and McDonald Islands) and at Macquarie Island.
Appearance
The king penguin stands at 70 to 100 cm (28 to 39 in) tall and weighs from 9.3 to 18 kg (21 to 40 lb). Although female and male king penguins look alike, they can be separated by their calls. Males are also slightly larger than females. The mean body mass of adults from Marion Island was 12.4 kg (27 lb) for 70 males and 11.1 kg (24 lb) for 71 females. Another study from Marion Island found that the mean mass of 33 adults feeding chicks was 13.1 kg (29 lb). The king penguin is approximately 25% shorter and weighs around a third less than the emperor penguin. At first glance, the king penguin appears similar to the larger, closely related emperor penguin, with a broad cheek patch contrasting with surrounding dark feathers and yellow-orange plumage at the top of the chest. However, the cheek patch of the adult king penguin is a solid bright orange whereas that of the emperor penguin is yellow and white, and the upper chest tends to be more orange and less yellowish in the king species. Both have colourful markings along the side of their lower mandible, but these tend towards pink in emperor penguin and orange in king penguin. Emperor and king penguins typically do not inhabit the same areas in the wild, with the possible exception of vagrants at sea, but the two can be distinguished from one another by the king's longer, straighter bill, larger flippers, and noticeably sleeker body. The juvenile king penguin with its long bill and heavy dark brown down is completely different in appearance from the mostly grey emperor chick with its black and white mask. Once moulted of its brown juvenile plumage, the king chick resembles the adult, but is somewhat less colourful. The king penguin often breeds on the same large circumpolar islands as other penguin species, but it is easily distinguished from other species by its much larger size and taller frame, colorful markings, and grizzled sooty-greyish rather than blackish back.
Distribution and habitat
King penguins breed on subantarctic islands between 45 and 55°S, at the northern reaches of Antarctica, as well as Tierra del Fuego (Argentinian part), the Falkland Islands, and other temperate islands of the region. The total population is estimated to be 2.23 million pairs and is increasing. The largest breeding populations are on the Crozet Islands, with around 455,000 pairs, 228,000 pairs on the Prince Edward Islands, 240,000–280,000 on the Kerguelen Islands, and over 100,000 in the South Georgia archipelago. By the early 1920s, the king penguin population in South Georgia and the Falklands was nearly wiped out by whalers based on these islands. Constant fires were required to boil whale blubber for extraction of the oil. As the Falklands and South Georgia had no trees to use for firewood, the whalers burned millions of oily, blubber-rich penguins as fuel. The whalers also used penguin oil for lamps, heating and cooking, in addition to eating the birds and their eggs. Macquarie Island currently has around 70,000 pairs. The non-breeding range is unknown; many vagrant birds have been seen on the Antarctic peninsula as well as in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. One of the largest known king penguin colonies, on Île aux Cochons in the Crozet Islands, experienced a massive drop in its population over the last few decades, from about half a million breeding pairs in the 1980s to about 60,000 breeding pairs in 2017. The cause of this decline may be changes in the ecosystem related to climate change as their primary source of food is moving farther away from places where the penguins can breed. This may result in population declines and shifts in the locations of the king penguin breeding grounds. The Nature Protection Society released several king penguins at Gjesvær in Finnmark and Røst in Lofoten in northern Norway in August 1936. Penguins were seen in the area several times during the 1940s; there were a few unconfirmed sightings of penguins in the area during the early 1950s, but none have been officially recorded since 1949.
Ecology and behavior
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