Classroom lesson · Wildlife · 🇦🇷 Argentina

Magellanic penguins of Patagonia

About 1.5 million birds nest on the coasts of southern Argentina

A Magellanic penguin standing next to its burrow on a Patagonian coast

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Magellanic penguins are medium-sized penguins (about 70 cm tall - about as tall as your school chair) that live on the southern coasts of Argentina and Chile. About 1.5 million of them gather every year on Patagonian beaches to have babies and raise their chicks before swimming north again for the winter.

Tell me more

Most penguins build their nests on rocks or in the snow. Magellanic penguins do something different - they dig burrows in the soft ground or under bushes. Each pair has its own burrow and comes back to the exact same one every year, even after months apart at sea.

Mum and dad penguin both look after the chicks. They take turns - one stays at the burrow while the other walks (or 'porpoises' - small jumps through the water) to the sea to catch fish. Then they swap. Penguins can recognise their own partner by the sound of their call, even in a colony of half a million other penguins.

Once their chicks have grown, the whole colony heads north for the winter, swimming up to 5,000 kilometres along the coast of South America to warmer waters. Then they swim all the way back to the exact same beach next spring.

Magellanic penguins are named after a sailor called Magellan who saw them about 500 years ago while sailing past Patagonia. The penguins, of course, had been there a lot longer than him - they just hadn't bothered with a name.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01How might a penguin find the exact same burrow every year after a 5,000 km swim?
  2. 02Both penguin parents share the work. What kinds of jobs in the world do you think work best when people share?
  3. 03What would it feel like to recognise a friend's voice in a crowd of hundreds of thousands?
Try this

Classroom activity

Each pupil thinks of one sound or call that is unique to them. As a class, sit in a circle, close your eyes, and try to recognise each classmate just by their sound. How many of your friends can you tell apart with your eyes closed?

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