I'm a few days behind on the comics, but the lame-ass Dick Tracy Halloween night story line (yes, ONE night) is finally over!! Almost three months later, the story has finally ended, as disappointingly as it started and with no meaningful resolution based on the duration and absurdity of the story line. I've only been reading it to see how long the cartoonist would steal from the many newspapers who syndicate his strip. How he sleeps at night, I'll never know.
Since there's no football this weekend, I've been catching up on Tivo. Sure, I could have done something productive around the house, but what's the point in that? Anyway, one of the shows I Tivoed is March of the Penguins. Some interesting facts about Emperor Penguins:
-There are many more female Emperors than males.
-Emperor Penguins walk and slide nearly 70 miles (taking 2 weeks of almost constant movement) to the mating grounds.
-Females that can't find a male, simply return to the see.
-After laying her egg, the female passes it to the male who will incubate the egg at 95 degrees (on top of his feet and under his fat, for nearly two months.
-The female doesn't hang around after passing the egg. She bails and heads back to sea, having lost almost 1/3rd of her body weight.
-Only 66% of eggs will hatch in any given year on average.
-When the storms come in, thousands of males will huddle together and slowly rotate who is on the outside of the pack and who is on the inside, thus insuring as many eggs as possible survive.
-When the male finally leaves the hatched egg (by passing it back to the mother who returns after feeding), he marches back to the sea with only about 1/2 of his original body weight in tact. They think this is why there are so many fewer males; many perish on this return trip to the sea.
It's a good movie by the way. Very informative.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
You ought to watch the Planet Earth episode on the same thing.
did you fall in love with morgan freeman's voice as well? the man could narrate a tampon commerical and make me go teary-eyed.
I have the Planet Earth series in HD, if you would like to borrow it and watch the series. It really is something you should see, if you haven't yet.
I do love the Planet Earth series, though I don't remember the one on Penguins. I still have "Forests", "Caves" and "Jungles" on Tivo. Good stuff. Blue Planet is pretty sweet too. Thanks DogBrian!
Yes Alexis, Morgan was awesome. I can hear him now, "The tampon, created for this one...solitary moment, frees itself from it's protective outerwrapping, not realizing the fate in store." Just awesome.
You're welcome. Take care of the cough. "From Pole to Pole" is the one that you need to Tivo to see the Penguins.
Oh right dogbrian! I did see that one. It's been a while now though. I'm still struggling with the cough, but am hopeful that progress will be made today.
Post a Comment