Are penguins loyal to one another? Are penguins loyal to human beings? Are penguins loyal to their partners? Do they love their children? Why do they often visit the rookeries in which they are born?
I will answer such questions in my article. Undoubtedly, loyalty is highly associated with penguins. As we sometimes say to our beloved ones: Will you be my penguin? It means that just as penguins are loyal to one another, we metaphorically ask our beloved ones to be loyal to us.
- Is loyalty associated only with humans?
Loyalty is the supreme quality which not only adorns our lives but also adds mellow sweetness in the lives of these creatures as well. Obviously, life is like a blank book and we have to write our own fate. Like humans, penguins are also blessed with the amazing quality of faithfulness. They live by making strong emotional attachments with their mates.
- The Loyalty of two penguins who fall in love with each other.
Penguins are very possessive towards their partners. They choose their life partners very carefully. Exchange of precious stones and sticks as gifts is the way by which penguins express their love. Lovemaking is of prime importance for them. They express love in a very cute and adorable way. The love lives of penguins are characterized by deep emotions and feelings. They give quality time to their beloveds and in most cases, they never perform any kind of disloyal act.
- Penguins choose their mates to marry.
It seems incredible. But it actually happens. They choose their life partners, exchange precious gifts with each other, plan their future nesting sites and collect sticks to embellish these nesting sites. They decorate their homes and put precious gift stones inside their nests as a memory of how their love life began. Living together and making more penguins are the purposes of their love lives. But they do have certain rules and regulations. They believe in building trustworthy relationships and never let their partners be attracted to other penguins. Male penguins are even more possessive in their nature. Before living together, both love birds gather tiny sticks to decorate their future nesting sites.
- Penguins are monogamous.
Penguins are highly monogamous. This means male and female pairs will mate exclusively with each other for the duration of mating season. For most of their lives, male and female penguins continue to mate with each other. However, emperor penguins don’t follow this strict rule of monogamy. They spend every breeding season with a different one. So from our perspective, we can describe them disloyal. They choose different partners to mate. Lovemaking is only and only for the purpose of making more penguins. All other species of penguins are very faithful and marry only once in their lifetime.
- Penguins hang out with their partners.
Like humans in successful relationships, they find that hanging out with their partner is the greatest joy of life. Strong and healthy relationships are built when both the partners learn to give quality time to each other. They eat, drink and fish together, make strong bonds of love and enjoy spending time with each other. Beauty of relationships lies in developing mutual cooperation. Penguins are highly intelligent and wise and know how to maintain a balance between social life and love life. They understand that loneliness is a curse and healthy relationships come into being when both partners learn to live together.
- Female penguin waits for one year if her husband is lost.
If the husband of a female penguin does not come back to its home, she doesn’t immediately choose a new life partner. She waits for a year. She lives alone for one year. In this time period, she keeps herself at a distance from other male members. This is a very special way of expressing faithfulness. If her husband doesn’t come for a year, she then chooses a new life partner and shifts from her previous nesting site to her new home. Of course, she knows that her previous husband is no longer alive or has been lost.
- Penguins are extremely loyal to their nesting sites where they are born.
Penguins are greatly and equally loyal to their nesting sites. Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere, with only one species, the Galápagos penguin, found north of the equator. They make their nests using fragile sticks and stones. Penguins often visit their birthplaces and are very sentimental about their nesting sites and often come back to the rookeries in which they are born. Research shows that about 99% of penguins come back to their birthplaces twice in a year.
- Male penguins incubate their eggs.
Male penguin trusts his female partner and allows her to go out of the nesting site and find food. He himself incubates his eggs. He is very much worried about his children and leaves all his social and recreational activities for two months. A male penguin is very caring and affectionate towards his children. This loyal behavior of male penguins towards their offspring is also expressed during the process of huddling. It is obviously tough and exhausting for a male penguin to leave all his activities just to keep his eggs warm. He doesn’t want to hand over this duty to anyone else.. not even his wife.
- A few penguins are disloyal to their partners.
A few female penguins prostitute. They show faithless behavior. Isn’t it hard to believe that disloyalty exists in penguins as well? There are many reasons for their faithless behavior. Most of the time, these prostitutes steal stones and food from the nests of their illegal partners. They want to conceal their disloyal behavior from their husbands. Male penguins often trust their wives and allow them to go out of their homes for recreational activities. Prostitution among penguins was first reported in 1998 by Fiona Hunter. Sometimes faithless behavior of female penguins is revealed in front of their husbands but still, they compromise and continue to live with them. But due to the faithless behavior of their wives, they become depressed, stop their cheerful activities and start to live in their nesting sites making themselves alone. Perhaps, they sacrifice for their children. Little chicks are greatly loved by their fathers. They can understand the specific sounds produced by their fathers and respond accordingly.
On the other hand, disloyal behavior is also observed in male penguins. They sometimes involve in homosexual activities. Such penguins are also socially disliked. Female penguins feel jealous and try to change their mates when they observe this type of faithless behavior in their husbands.
- Are penguins loyal to human beings?
This is indeed a very debatable and interesting question. Human beings are very strange and weird creatures for the penguins. Penguins often bite human skin to check what will happen. They may be friendly but this depends on how we treat them. If we hold them tightly in our hands, they will take revenge by biting. Penguins are not basically social, that’s why they are considered socially awkward. We may consider them cute and try to hug them but still they can bite. They cannot understand the affectionate and sympathetic behavior of humans so simply and easily, although they learn to love humans gradually.
- What do the penguins teach us about loyalty?
Penguins teach us that we should be loyal to our life partners. Nature has very artistically manifested itself in the form of different living things including the birds like penguins. They are rare but their features and characteristics resemble humans to a very large extent and we feel it quite fascinating to observe their lifestyles. Loyalty is highly appreciable quality and it adorns the personality. Loyalty towards homeland is an admirable character and in our language, we call it patriotism. So we can say penguins are very patriotic and they often visit their birthplaces. They love their families and always try to live happily and faithfully. We should learn to love our near and dear ones from the lives of penguins. We have often heard this type of sentence.
I will be your penguin. Will you be my penguin for your whole life?
I hope we all have seen the video of a female penguin betraying her husband. We may only consider it a joke but actually this video is reality-based.
So this was all about penguins’ loyalty. I think you can decide now whether the penguins are loyal or not. I think they are loyal to a very great extent. Their habits and characteristics resemble closely to human beings. A deep sense of patriotism and devotion is present in them. When I studied deeply about their lives, I felt that nature wants to teach some very fantastic lessons of life from the lives of penguins. Their gait and appearance also resemble humans and immediately draw our attention. I think loyalty is one of the qualities of penguins which nature has conferred to them. They are simple and straightforward. They are loyal to their native land. I have fallen in love with these creatures. Now I have a desire to see them and their unique nesting sites.