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The king penguin is the second largest, standing at about 3 feet tall and weighing about 40
pounds. They have a bright orange spot on the back of their head. Usually the male is larger
than the female. The king penguins feed only every 14 days, so they lose half their weight in
between feedings.
King penguins are white-bellied and black-bodied with a dark head, an orange oval along the
side of the face and a yellow patch at the top of the breast near the base of the neck. King
penguins breed in large colonies on many sub-Antarctic islands. It takes them 14 to 16 months to
complete egg laying and chick raising. The females lay a single egg, which is incubated on both
parents feet. Both parents take turns incubating during the 54 day incubation period. The chicks
remain with their parents for another 30 to 40 days. At this time both parents go out to sea to
retrieve food for the growing chicks.
They breed without a nest in colonies of several thousands of birds. To be fed, the
chick must recognize the parents in a particularly noisy environment using only vocal cues. The call an adult makes when
seeking the chick is emitted at a high amplitude level. Nevertheless, it is transmitted in a colonial context involving the noise
generated by the colony and the screening effect of the bodies, both factors reducing the signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, the
adult call is masked by a background noise with similar amplitude and spectral and temporal characteristics, enhancing the
difficulty for the chick in finding its parents. It has been calculated, that the maximum distance from the caller at which its signal can be
differentiated from the background noise (signal-to-noise ratio equal to 1) should not exceed 25 ft. in a feeding area. But
tests show that, in fact, chicks can discriminate between the parental call and calls from other adults at a greater distance,
even when call intensity is well below that of the noise of simultaneous calls produced by other adults. This capacity to perceive
and extract the call of the parent from the ambient noise and particularly from the calls of other adults, termed the
'cocktail-party effect' in speech intelligibility tests, enhances the chick's ability to find its parents.
The chicks will finally go out on their own at the age of 10
to 13 months.
Their predators are: leopard seals, brown skuas, and giant petrels.
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