Skinnyde
King Penguins
No matter how majestic its name—Royal, Emperor, King—there is always, to the human eye, a little of the absurd in the movement of a penguin. Its paddle-wings held out in what seems like wild hope of balance, its lumbering upright posture, as if it is always and forever learning to walk; these things lend a penguin, even in the full glory of its adult plumage, something of the awkwardness of a child. And so we coo, and put our hands to our hearts, and even laugh at what we believe to be the penguin’s simplicity. I mean, let us be blunt. The poor things haven’t even been able to fly for 50 million years or more.
Except they have. In 1987, naturalists Tony Soper and John Sparks famously characterized the evolution of penguins as a continuous refinement of the capacity for underwater flight. Those short, dense, heavy flippers, so useless on land or in the sky, drive them fiercely forward, like soaring swifts, beneath the surface of the sea. The mighty pectoral muscles that other birds use to support themselves on the current of the air, penguins use to wheel against the pressure of water.
Where we cannot see them, penguins are all sinew and grace.
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