Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Chin­strap pen­guins make their home around the Antarc­tic Penin­sula and the coastal is­lands of the con­ti­nent. Mainly, you find them on the South Shet­land Is­lands, South Orkney Is­land and South Sand­wich (Welch 1997).

• Biogeographic Regions
• atlantic ocean
  • native
• pacific ocean
  • native

Habi­tat

Chin­strap Pen­guins often live on large ice­bergs on the open ocean. One colony on the South Sand­wich Is­lands is said to con­tain over 10 mil­lion birds. They are a sta­ble pop­u­la­tion and were last es­ti­mated to in­clude about 7.5 mil­lion breed­ing pairs. (Barham and Barham 1996, Welch 1997, Woehler and Chip­ping­dale 2000).

• Terrestrial Biomes
• icecap

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Chin­strap pen­guins are white on the front and throat but have a black back. A thin band of black plumage runs from one side of the head to the other, right below each red­dish eye and unites under the bill. Chicks have grey backs and white fronts. The male and fe­male Chin­straps are monomor­phic, as are all other pen­guins, thus make it hard to tell them apart with­out non-mor­pho­log­i­cal cues. They stand about 72 cm tall and weigh about 3.5 to 5 kg. Adult weight varies dur­ing the year. When the pen­guin is in the molt­ing sea­son they gain the most weight and when they are in the brood­ing pe­riod they lose the most. Chin­strap pen­guins are able to with­stand ex­treme cold due to the in­su­la­tion pro­vided by their short, densely packed feath­ers. This in turn forms a wa­ter­proof coat. Un­der­neath these feath­ers, a thick layer of fat or blub­ber also serves as stor­age for en­ergy. These adap­ta­tions help pro­tect them against the ex­treme cold con­di­tions of the Antarc­tic by min­i­miz­ing heat loss in icy cold wa­ters (Hale 1999, Muller-Schwarze 1984, Welch 1997).

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Range mass

  3000 to 5000 g

  105.73 to 176.21 oz

Re­pro­duc­tion

The nests they build on ice­bergs are roughly cir­cu­lar con­sist­ing of stones and are typ­i­cally 40 cm in di­am­e­ter and up to 15 cm high. Chin­strap pen­guins usu­ally lay two eggs, gen­er­ally two to four weeks later than other py­goscelid species in the same area. The Chin­straps com­plete their breed­ing cycle by Feb­ru­ary or March and go back to the pack ice dur­ing win­ter. The eggs are hatched by both par­ents in shifts of 5 to 10 days. After 33 to 35 days the chicks hatch and they stay in the nests for 20 to 30 days be­fore join­ing their crèches (groups of young pen­guins hud­dling to­gether for warmth and pro­tec­tion). At 50 to 60 days of age, after molt­ing, the chicks fi­nally go to sea (Barham and Barham 1996, Hale 1999).

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous

Be­hav­ior

Pen­guins in gen­eral com­mu­ni­cate through com­plex rit­ual be­hav­iors that in­clude head and flip­per wav­ing, call­ing, bow­ing, ges­tur­ing and preen­ing. Stares, point­ing and even charg­ing occur when the Chin­straps have ter­ri­to­r­ial dis­putes. Dur­ing courtship and mat­ing rit­u­als the male Chin­strap pen­guin com­mu­ni­cates through pump­ing his chest sev­eral times and stretch­ing his head up­ward. He then emits a harsh loud screech­ing sound and is soon joined in by other pen­guins, thus cre­ate a mass trum­pet­ing. This is be­lieved to help syn­chro­nize the breed­ing cycle. Chin­strap pen­guins live and breed in large colonies and dive off their ice­berg homes to catch fish and krill. The Chin­strap is con­sid­ered the bold­est pen­guin and thus is the most likely to fight other pen­guins. Lastly, they are rec­og­nized and some­times called "Stone cracker Pen­guins" be­cause of their high-pitched call (Hale 1999, Muller-Schwarze 1984, "Sci­ence: Pen­guins" 1995).

Their prin­ci­pal preda­tor is the leop­ard seal, while the main preda­tors of eggs and chicks are the Sheath­bill and Brown skua. They are not con­sid­ered to be mi­gra­tory (Barham and Barham 1996, Welch 1997, Woehler and Chip­ping­dale 2000).

• Key Behaviors
• motile

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

The Chin­strap's diet is quite sim­ple and con­sists of small shoal­ing an­i­mals: krill, small fish and other roam­ing ma­rine crus­tacea. Chin­strap pen­guins' prey is 95% krill and about 5% of the other species men­tioned (Barham and Barham 1996; Welch 1997).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Today, pen­guins are eco­nom­i­cally im­por­tant in South Amer­ica and South Africa for their guano, which is used for fer­til­izer. Pen­guins in gen­eral are a big tourist at­trac­tion no mat­ter where their home is. In the past, com­mer­cial egg col­lect­ing caused se­vere dam­age to rook­eries and pen­guins were also slaugh­tered for their blub­ber. In some places, such as is­lands in the south­ern In­dian Ocean, fish­er­men still use pen­guin meat for bait ("Pen­guins" 2000).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

Pen­guins eat seafood that con­sists of 94% fish, 5% squid, and 1% crus­tacea. Fish­eries argue that in one breed­ing sea­son, all species of pen­guin are able to eat 7,000 tons of food, and 2,900 of that has eco­nomic value to hu­mans (Sparks and Soper 1987).

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

12 to 13 mil­lion Chin­strap pen­guins are thought to be lo­cated on the bar­ren is­lands of the sub-Antarc­tic Re­gion and the Antarc­tic Penin­sula. Thus, this species is in no im­me­di­ate dan­ger. They are legally pro­tected from hunt­ing and egg col­lect­ing.

Two re­cent stud­ies show that pen­guins have been in­fected with dis­eases that were most likely spread by peo­ple dis­card­ing poul­try. Aus­tralian sci­en­tists at Maw­son Sta­tion inAn­tar­tica found an­ti­bod­ies for in­fec­tious bur­sal dis­ease virus (IBDV) in Em­peror pen­guin chicks (Apten­odytes forsteri) and adults of Py­goscelis adeliae, Adelie pen­guins. Swedish sci­en­tists found Sal­mo­nella bac­te­ria in pen­guins on Bird Is­land.

Under the Antarc­tic Treaty Sys­tem, the "Agreed Mea­sures for the Con­ser­va­tion of Antarc­tic Fauna and Flora pro­hibit killing, wound­ing, cap­tur­ing, or mo­lest­ing any na­tive mam­mal or bird in Antarc­tica with­out a per­mit." These "Agreed Mea­sures" strengthen the con­ser­va­tion by the Pro­to­col on En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion for the Antarc­tic Treaty. Annex II. This pro­to­col pro­hibits the im­port of live poul­try, and re­quires spe­cific treat­ment for dressed poul­try and its dis­posal. To eval­u­ate the stat­ues of var­i­ous an­i­mals the the Con­ser­va­tion As­sess­ment and Man­age­ment Plan (CAMP) is used, which de­ter­mines the con­ser­va­tion pri­or­i­ties for a coun­try. Dur­ing a con­fer­ence in 1992 where New Zealand pen­guins were dis­cussed re­sulted in the choices of fur­ther man­age­ment, re­search and cap­tive breed­ing pro­grams for nine species and sub­species. ("Pen­guins", 2000)

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• US Migratory Bird Act

  No special status

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  Appendix I

Other Com­ments

Other names for the Chin­strap pen­guins are "Ringed pen­guin" and "Bearded pen­guin". No sub­species have been pro­posed and they are the small­est of the py­goscelids (Barham and Barham 1996, Welch 1997).

Con­trib­u­tors

Mike Coul­son (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, Rudi Berkel­hamer (ed­i­tor), Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine.

Ref­er­ences

2000. "Pen­guins" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oct. 23, 2000 at http://​www.​seaworld.​org/​Penguins/​pageone.​html.

1995. "Sci­ence: Pen­guins" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oct. 24, 2000 at http://​www.​terraquest.​com/​va/​science/​penguins/​penguins.​html#​B.

Barham, P., B. Barham. 1996. "Pete & Barb's Pen­guin Pages" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oct. 24, 2000 at http://​ourworld.​compuserve.​com/​homepages/​Peter_​and_​Barbara_​Barham/​chin.​htm.

Hale, P. 1999. "Pen­guins Around the World: Chin­strap Pen­guin" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oct. 23, 2000 at http://​www.​siec.​k12.​in.​us/​~west/proj/pen­guins/chinstrap.​html.

Muller-Schwarze, D. 1984. The Be­hav­ior of Pen­guins: Adapted to Ice and Trop­ics. Al­bany, New York: State Uni­ver­sity of New York Press.

Sparks, J., T. Soper. 1987. Pen­guins. Ox­ford: Facts on File Pub­li­ca­tions.

Welch, K. 1997. "The Pen­guin Page" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oct. 23, 2000 at http://​users.​capu.​net/​~kwelch/pp/.

Woehler, E., M. Clip­ping­dale. 2000. "Chin­strap Pen­guin: Ten Facts" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oct. 23, 2000 at http://​www.​eaglehawksc.​vic.​edu.​au/​kla/​sose/​antarct/​tenfacts/​chinstrp.​htm.