Unity Is Strength: Penguin Animation and How Real Penguins Huddle

A handful of cartoon penguins on a floating slab of ice is all it takes to tell one of the oldest stories there is: alone we are vulnerable, together we are strong. Unity is Strength is a short animated film shared on YouTube by Sree Kumar, and it tells its story through movement on the ice. The surprise is how close its message comes to the way real penguins survive the hardest winter on the planet.

Unity is Strength: a fable told on the ice

Like Aesop's fables, the film uses animals to make a human lesson easy to see. The plain white ice keeps attention on the birds, and the changing arrangement of the group carries the story. Penguins are a natural choice for the part, because the image of a tight group of birds on the ice is already a symbol of shared effort.

It is a good film to watch with children and then talk about: what changes when the penguins stop acting alone, and does every member of a team have to do the same job?

How emperor penguins really work together

In Antarctica, cooperation is a matter of survival. Emperor penguins breed through the southern winter, when air temperatures can fall to −40 °C and winds in the breeding areas reach 144 km/h, with gusts of up to 200 km/h. Their answer is the huddle, sometimes called the turtle formation.

• Size: huddles range from about ten birds to several hundred.
• Posture: each bird leans slightly forward against its neighbour, and some turn their backs to the wind.
• Rotation: birds on the windward edge shuffle around the outside and rejoin on the sheltered side, so the whole group slowly churns and everyone gets a turn in the warm centre.
• Rhythm: the colony can stay still for long periods, then small shifts every 30 to 60 seconds ripple through it like a wave.

The penguin fathers' long winter

The huddle matters most to the males. Each one balances an egg on his feet for about 65 to 75 days while the females are away feeding at sea. By the time the chick hatches, a male may have gone around 120 days without food since arriving at the colony, and can lose up to 20 kg over the whole period of travel, courtship and incubation, dropping from about 38 kg to 18 kg. Sharing heat in the huddle is what makes that fast survivable.

The chicks learn the same lesson early. About 45 to 50 days after hatching they gather in crèches, groups that range from a dozen to several thousand young birds, for warmth and protection. Unity really is strength on the ice.

Explore more: editing a penguin dance sequence; penguins in a real-animal compilation.

Related reading:

• Would You Give Johannes Your Jacket? The Oslo Campaign Film
• Hovercraft Deer Rescue on Albert Lea Lake

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