When I started work on this site I just thought of penguins as an interesting topic. But when I got to the end, I saw them as amazing creatures that outwit nature in every way. They can survive and thrive in the world’s most remote places with little trouble.
I think that people should learn more about penguins because they can teach us about things needed to be able to survive in harsh conditions. While researching for this project I learned that Emperor Penguins stand at 4ft tall and that the smallest penguin is the White-flippered penguin, which stands at only 1ft tall (“Emperor Penguin”) (“White-flippered Penguin”). I though this was interesting because there was such a big difference in height in between these two penguins. I also learned that there were penguins living in the tropics of the Galapagos islands (Ainley). This was strange to me because I thought that penguins lived only in the Arctic. Finally, I was amazed to learn that many penguins survive temperatures as low as -70º Fahrenheit on a day to day basis (“Climate of Antarctica”). I was amazed at this because those kinds of temperatures are ridiculously cold.
The source that helped me the most with all my information was probably World Book online. I learned basically all the information about how penguins survive in the harsh arctic for their entire lives. Another source that really helped me was Wikipedia. Many would say that it is not credible, but I only used articles that were protected and certified credible. I basically learned all about all the different types of penguins and their evolutionary history on Wikipedia.
I wrote an informational essay, a free verse poem, this preface, and a short story. The informational essay, poem, and preface were all required, but I decided to write a short story because I wanted to come up with a longer fictional piece than a poem that would encompass penguins’ adventures. I think the most challenging piece was my essay because it required a lot of research and note taking and a large amount of writing. To tie all my pieces together I found some animated penguin GIFs and put them at the bottom of every writing piece as a funny connection.
It is amazing what conditions penguins can survive through and how they even thrive in these conditions. I think this project was really fun and I learned a lot of information about penguins while working on this. Go forth and read the website, I hope you enjoy what you read.