Movie review - March of the Penguins

Date:   5/1/2006 11:26:32 AM ( 18 y ago)

WOW

This is just amazing.Nature is like that, and if only we took a closer look, like this movie does, at the ways other life forms get along in life, we would have a different attitude, and more respect for nature and environment. A better attitude, a better world. More of this please!!

It goes on for months on end - they stand there cradling an EGG on their funny clawed feet, a flap of warm skin and hair keeping it warm. Warm, at the South Pole, where it is -80c and thats without the wind factor. Winds of 100mph. And these are the months down there that are total darkness, other than the most amazing light show on earth [aurora borealis -is that what they call it in the south too?].

They don't stay at the coastal waaters to give birth, too many predators. So they walk 70 miles - and penguins don't walk as much as waddle - inland and they stay there for most of the winter months. At one point the mothers transfer the egg to the male partner and then the mothers scoot back to the coast and eat.

Then something else amazing happens. The males are starving back inland, cradling that egg, and the eggs start to hatch. The males saved ONE MEAL in a fold of skin in their throats - all these months - for the chick's first meal when it first hatches.That will only keep the chick alive for two days, maybe three. Here it comes.... amazingly, the mother "knows" from 70 miles away when it it time to start waddling back inland to the males and chicks. They have been feeding in the ocean for several weeks, but have to arrive WITHIN TWO DAYS OF HATCHING or the chicks die.

I got goosebumps.

I got goosebumps because its amazing. And it is evidence of that communication ability we see in "nature's more natural creatures than us" where they move and do things based on cues we don't see or hear or smell or taste.

Just "feel". They "feel" its time to go feed their chicks. Maybe people got this ability too, we just don't believe we do, we don't NEED to use it so it has become dormant... but I believe its there. Sometimes when we do need it, it has been there, and we call it a miracle as if it is delivered by god, but we do a disservice to ourselves when we say that. Its in us, not given to us.

Okay, so back to the Penguins. They don't eat for many months in the harshest environment on earth, as part of the reproduction process. THe mothers almost die after birthing the egg and passing it over and then marching back to the seas. Then the males almost die of starvation while inland hatching that egg - for another 2 or 3 months after the females leave. The eggs often freeze or perish in the transfers.

Its survival by a thread, for eons upon eons. At the south pole. And they are beautiful, that bit of red on their hair around the neck looks so stunning in the bleak dark long night of the south pole. They are beautiful in their dedication to the egg and to their mates, they are paired up for one season, no hanky panky, no trading spouses. If a pair is split up or one dies, the egg is a goner.

March of the Penguins is only one of millions of amazing true stories from nature's more natural creatures. We should be so well educated as to know just a fraction of these stories.

Karlin





 

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