The Emperor Penguin is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica. In hunting, the species can remain submerged up to 18Â minutes, diving to a depth of 535Â m (1,755Â feet).
They are the only penguin species that breed during the Antarctic winter when temperatures reach -60°C, Emperor Penguins trek 50–120 km (31–75 mi) over the ice to breeding colonies which may include thousands of individuals. They huddle tightly together to keep warm. After egg-laying, all the females return to the ocean to feed, leaving each male carefully balancing a single egg on his feet, warming it in a special pouch on his belly. The male starves as he waits for the egg to hatch, through the endless night of the Antarctic winter.
In 2012 the Emperor Penguin was up listed from a species of ‘least concern’ to ‘near threatened’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).