Scores of baby penguins bravely dove off a massive 50-foot cliff for their first-ever swim in the icy Antarctic waters below, incredible new footage shows.
Award-winning National Geographic cinematographer Bertie Gregory spent a frigid two months tracking the 10,000-strong flock of Emperor penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula when he captured the chicks’ never-before-seen behavior on camera, he told “Good Morning America.“
“It’s called fledging, when they take their first swim,” he said. “Normally they jump off of sea ice, which is 1 or 2 feet high. We were noticing that these trains of chicks were going past to a different place.
“So I launched the drone, flew it over there to see what was going on, and realized they were stacking up on the edge of a huge 50-foot ice cliff,” he continued.
A lengthy line of hundreds of newborn penguins can be seen waddling toward the intimidating cliff in the video.
The first takes the plunge dozens of young penguins follow
One courageous chick suddenly leaps and lands in the water with a splash, beating its defenseless wings as it descends. The others warily inch toward the edge. A few seconds later, the penguin is seen swimming safely on the video.
Taking courage another few chicks make the jump. Then a few more before dozens of the birds were paddling in the sea for the first time.
“They were falling and there were big chunks of ice floating in the water beneath them, so it’s like falling onto a chunk of concrete,” Gregory said. “But, to my amazement, they were not just surviving, but popping up and going, ‘I can swim!’ This is their first swim ever, the first swim of their lives.”
Gregory’s remarkable footage, which is the first time to ever show penguin chicks cliff jumping, will be featured in Nat Geo’s 2025 installment of its Emmy award-winning “Secrets of” franchise, “Secrets of the Penguins,” which premieres Earth Day 2025.
The emperor penguin is the tallest and heaviest of all penguins
The emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica. The male and female are similar in plumage and size, reaching 100 cm (39 in) in length and weighing from 22 to 45 kg (49 to 99 lb). Feathers of the head and back are black and sharply delineated from the white belly, pale-yellow breast and bright-yellow ear patches.
The only penguin species that breeds during the Antarctic winter, emperor penguins trek 50–120 km (31–75 mi) over the ice to breeding colonies which can contain up to several thousand individuals. The female lays a single egg, which is incubated for just over two months by the male while the female returns to the sea to feed; parents subsequently take turns foraging at sea and caring for their chick in the colony.
The lifespan is typically 20 years in the wild, although observations suggest that some individuals may live to 50 years of age.
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