Do penguins have emotions? Or does their behavior spring from instinct
and evolution?
Morgan Freeman’s narrative voice tells us this is a story about love.
Is it really?
Or is this a joyously pure evolutionary cycle?
Luc Jacquet and his National Geographic team have spent a year filming
“March of the Penguins,” and their fine film plays quietly to the human
capacity for compassion.
They have captured a miracle, and it silences us.
First of all, the penguins are astoundingly beautiful.
Against a constant landscape of blue water and sky next to the whitest
ice, these creatures stand tall in dignity.
Rectangular and blocky, they are topped by a head and neck of unyielding
grace. The
faster they move, the more they waddle awkwardly from side to side – because
they don’t have legs or knee joints to enable them to walk, just strong feet,
first one, then the other, while the body sways from side to side.
And when they get tired, they dive onto their bellies and slide
themselves along by force of flipper and foot.
They look comically clumsy at times and utterly graceful at others.
Their backs are the darkest gray, their heads of the same jet black that
delineates back from belly.
A slash of rust marks each side of the neck.
Who designed this cloak?
Each year penguins come from wherever they live to join a single line
that treks 70 miles to the place where they were born.
Each year they walk a little farther to account for the receding ice.
There, each will choose a mate, make one egg, and then initiate the
protective ritual that will bring one more glorious penguin into the world.
What
do they eat? The
females trek the 70 miles back to their starting point to get food from the open
water and then back to the males who are guarding the eggs from the artic freeze
in a fold of their skin.
The ritual between male and female is perfectly calibrated to prevent
exposure of an egg to the fierce cold for even seconds.
After two months of standing huddled against wind and snow, the males,
down to half their weight, make the same trip to feed themselves while the
females nourish the chicks.
This
is surely one of the most grueling life cycles on the planet.
In a rhythm so deft that it brings tears, these beautiful creatures
fulfill the destiny that has evolved for them.
The pengu
Copyright (c) Illusion