The Long Walk Away From Dinner
Emma and Percy are a mating pair of Emperor penguins at a colony on the Antarctic sea ice. They are fictional. What they describe is not — every post matches what real Emperors are doing on the date it's published. Please don't ask how they got Wi-Fi.
Emma: Every other animal with sense is heading toward the food right now. The summer's over, the sea is thick with fish, and we have just turned our backs on all of it to walk inland into the dark. On foot. In single file. For days.
Percy: It's tradition.
Emma: It's a commute that would make a saint swear. Fifty, sixty, a hundred kilometres across new sea ice to a patch of frozen nothing that looks exactly like every other patch of frozen nothing — except it's the patch where the ice stays put all winter. That's the whole reason. We don't breed where the food is. We breed where the ground won't melt out from under the egg.
Percy: When you say it like that it sounds almost clever.
Emma: It is almost clever. That's what's infuriating about it. We're walking away from dinner so that, in nine months, there'll be a chick standing on ice that didn't break. I just wish the cleverness didn't have to go through my feet.
Percy: I like the walk. Whole colony moving together, nobody in a hurry, the light going copper and low. When my legs give out I get down on my belly and toboggan. You should try it.
Emma: I have dignity, Percy.
Percy: You have a long way to go and two working legs. The dignity's optional.
Field Notes — the real biology
- Emperor penguins are the only penguin that breeds in the Antarctic winter, and they do it inland, on stable "fast ice" that stays frozen through the season — not at the open-water edge where the food is.
- To reach the traditional colony site, adults march (and toboggan on their bellies) up to 100 km from the sea, arriving across March–April as the new sea ice forms.
- They breed away from food on purpose: the colony site is chosen for ice stability, so the ground beneath the egg and chick won't break up before the chick can swim. The trade-off is a long fast for the adults — exactly the trade-off the rest of the season is built around.