Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE PENGUINS

Penguins in Antarctica

The relationship between the Penguins and other birds is rather hard to make out. Professor Watson, who studied the extensive material obtained by the Challenger expedition, regards them as the surviving members of a group that branched off early from the primitive”avian”stem, but”at the time of their separation the stem had diverged so far from reptiles as to possess true wings, though the metatarsal bones had not lost their distinctness and become pressed into the single bone so characteristic of existing birds.”Pycraft has studied the anatomy of the group more recently, and, while he recognizes the fact that the skeletal specialization has reached the high-water mark, it does not, he claims, take us beyond the confines of the Class.

He says: “Osteologically the Penguins seem to be nearly related to the Tubinares and Pygopodes, and, as Gadow and others have shown, the evidence of the soft parts confirms this supposition.”Dr. Stejneger considers that the Penguins should be placed in a group of equal rank with the Ostriches and their allies, and the rest of living birds, that is to say that existing birds should be divided into three groups, of which the Penguins should constitute one.

Others, and more especially Gadow, whom we are following, regard the characters as of somewhat less importance and would only accord them ordinal rank. Apparently we must look to paleontology for further light on this perplexing point, and this, as already pointed out, seems to indicate that the line separating them from carinate birds in general is less sharp than was formerly supposed.

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