Opus counters with the tale about penguins looking up at airplanes and falling over to make the point that whether one person or ten thousand performs a silly action, it's still a silly thing to do. Servicemen claimed that when helicopters and airplanes flew over colonies of King penguins, the transfixed birds would look up, follow the line of flight with their eyes and then all topple over. Royal Air Force pilots have long been ridiculed, but remain adamant: fly above a penguin colony, they say, and the curious birds topple over like dominos as they stare up at the aircraft.
Emperor penguins don't make nests, so there's no fixed spot where you can go and expect to meet up with your family. There's just a huge crowd of penguins standing around on a flat ice sheet. It's noisy, and, to make matters worse, all the penguins look pretty much identical.
How do you figure out who's who? Can penguins get up if they fall over? Penguins have short stumpy legs and flippers compared to the length of their bodies. Naval helicopters will help scientists discover if it is true that penguins look up when aircraft fly by. They are the tallest and heaviest of any penguin species.
They can stand up to about 48 inches tall and weigh up to about 99 pounds.King penguins look somewhat like Emperors, but Kings are thinner. They claim the penguins crane their heads back so far to watch planes and helicopters buzzing overhead that it causes them to lose balance and tip over. "The penguins always look up at the helicopters flying over - and follow them all the way until they fall backward," said Stuart Matthews, operations officer on the HMS Endurance.
Is it true that helicopters cant fly over penguins because they look up and fall over and cant get back up again? hah lol that's not true. penguins belly flop down snow hills all the time and are. Where do penguins live, description (size, color), what they eat, species list, mating, baby penguins, characteristics, sounds, lifespan, and pictures.