When one is sitting on a beach in Australia, there are a few animals one does not expect to see. A lion, maybe, or a grizzly bear. Somewhere on that list is the emperor penguin. But on Friday, an emperor penguin somehow waddled up onto the sand of Ocean Beach in Denmark, Western Australia.
According to a statement from Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA), the lost animal was malnourished, which is to be expected after traveling thousands of miles from its regular home in Antarctica.
Ocean Beach is nearly 2,500 miles north of Antarctica, and it’s likely that the penguin followed a current.
“What they tend to do is follow certain currents where they’re going to find lots of different types of food,” Belinda Cannell, a research fellow at the University of Western Australia, told ABC News. “So maybe those currents have just tended to be a little bit further north towards Australia than they normally would.”
The penguin is now under the watchful eye of a wildlife rehabilitation expert, a process that is expected to take a few weeks. A local surfer named Aaron Fowler was one of the people who happened to see the penguin as it made its way onto the beach.
“It was massive, it was way bigger than a sea bird and we’re like, what is that thing coming out of the water? And it kind of had a tail sticking out like a duck,” Fowler said to ABC. “It stood up in the waves and just waddled straight up to us, an emperor penguin, he was probably about a meter high, and he was not shy at all. He tried to do like a slide on his belly, thinking it was snow, I guess, and just face-planted in the sand and stood up and shook all the sand off.”
Emperor penguins are surprisingly large, weighing up to 88 pounds and standing a little over three feet tall. They’re in pretty dire straits right now. The warming climate is threatening their habitat, their food sources, and even the location of their breeding colonies.
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