March of the Penguins

March of the Penguins French La Marche de lempereur French pronunciationlama dlp is a 2005 French feature length nature documentary directed and cowritten by Luc Jacquet, and coproduced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society. The documentary depicts the yearly journey of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguins of breeding age five years old and over leave the ocean, their normal habitat, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins participate in a courtship that, if successful, results in the hatching of a chick. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.

The emperor penguins use a particular spot as their breeding ground because it is on ice that is solid year round and there is no danger of the ice becoming too soft to support the colony. At the end of Antarctic summer, the breeding ground is only a few hundred meters away from the open water where the penguins can feed. However, by the end of winter, the breeding ground is over 100 kilometres 62mi away from the nearest open water. In order to reach it, all the penguins of breeding age must traverse this great distance.The penguins practice serial monogamy within each breeding season. The female lays a single egg, and the cooperation of the parents is needed if the chick is to survive. After the female lays the egg, she transfers it to the feet of the waiting male with minimal exposure to the elements, as the intense cold could kill the developing embryo. The male tends to the egg when the female returns to the sea, now even farther away, both in order to feed herself and to obtain extra food for feeding her chick when she returns. She has not eaten in two months and by the time she leaves the hatching area, she will have lost a third of her body weight. ........

Source: Wikipedia