National Geographic-Secrets of the Penguins (4B24)
Date: 11/11/2025
Name of book/magazine: National Geographic-Secrets of the Penguins
Publisher: National Geographic
This magazine made deep explorations of the habit, appearance and growth of the four major types of penguins--Great Penguins, Brush-tailed penguins, Crested penguins and Banded penguins. The content was divided into two parts, with the first part describing the ways how penguins lived in extreme conditions of Antarctica, and the second part analyzed the adaptive body features for penguins to live.
The most interesting content to me is how penguins move. Penguins are excellent swimmers beneath water. I was surprised that emperor penguins can dive deeper than any other species reaching 1600 feet below sea level. They can also submerge themselves for more than 20 minutes. Meanwhile, it was impressive that the penguins' father could release air bubbles and accelerate them out of the water. Besides underwater, penguins have special skills to move on ice. Instead of walking clumsily, penguins lie down and slide on their bellies, pushing themselves with paws and flippers. They can then move quickly on glaciers.
Penguins are resilient animals. For a million years, the whole earth had undergone many changes in its environment. However, penguins had successfully adapted to those evolutions as soon as possible and are still existing nowadays. Penguins could show adaptive behaviours in either ocean and land, like diving to an 'unreachable' depth and travel quickly on land. Scientists described that penguins could 'push the limit of their capabilities far away'. In our daily life, we should learn from the flexibility and resilience of penguins, facing difficulties bravely and finding ways to overcome them.
I will recommend the book to my schoolmate because the book covers unfamiliar contents in normal learning of biology. Besides, the topic——penguins, are mysterious animals to us, because the habitat Antarctica is too far away from Hong Kong. Except in Ocean Park, seldom do we meet penguins. The magazine is a great way to learn about them.
