King penguin

임금펭귄

The second-largest penguin after the emperor, with orange ear patches and a golden chest. It builds no nest and carries its single egg on top of its feet.

See it on the 3D globe →

At a glance

Class: Birds
Lives in: South Georgia
Diet: Fish eater
Weight: about 13 kg
Length: about 0.9 m
Lifespan: up to about 41 years
Conservation status: Least Concern (IUCN LC)
Habitat: coasts, polar regions

Quick answers

Where does the King penguin live?

It lives in coasts, polar regions of the Southern, Atlantic and Indian oceans. On the globe you can find it near South Georgia.

How big is the King penguin?

It grows to about 0.9 m and 13 kg.

What does the King penguin eat?

Its diet: fish eater.

How long does the King penguin live?

It can live up to about 41 years.

Is the King penguin endangered?

It is listed as Least Concern (IUCN LC).

The king penguin, Aptenodytes patagonicus, is the second largest penguin, smaller than but similar to the emperor penguin. It stands 70 to 100 centimetres tall and weighs about 9 to 18 kilograms. It has solid bright-orange cheek patches and a golden-yellow upper chest, which make it one of the most colourful penguins.

It breeds on subantarctic islands between about 45 and 55 degrees south, including South Georgia, the Crozet, Kerguelen and Prince Edward Islands, the Falklands and Macquarie Island. The total population is estimated at about 2.23 million pairs and is increasing. It was once hunted for blubber, oil, meat and feathers, but today it is fully protected and rated Least Concern.

A very long breeding year

The king penguin builds no nest. The female lays one pear-shaped white egg, and both parents balance it on their feet under a fold of belly skin. They swap shifts of 6 to 18 days, and the egg hatches after about 55 days.

For the next 30 to 40 days a chick stays on a parent's feet while the other parent fishes. Then the chicks form a crowd called a crèche, while parents fish. Because the cycle takes 14 to 16 months, a pair can usually raise only about two chicks in three years, and colonies are busy year-round.

Diving for dinner

King penguins mainly eat lanternfish, squid and krill. By day they dive to depths of 100 to 300 metres, spend about five minutes under water, and the deepest dive recorded was 343 metres. At night they stay shallower, under 30 metres.

Their usual swimming speed is 6.5 to 10 km/h, and they porpoise, leaping out to breathe while keeping speed. On land they waddle or toboggan, sliding on their bellies over ice. Predators are giant petrels, skuas, sheathbills, leopard seals and orcas.

Colonies, whalers and climate

Colonies can be huge: Salisbury Plain on South Georgia holds over 30,000 pairs, and St Andrew's Bay over 150,000. By the early 1920s the population on South Georgia and the Falklands was nearly wiped out when whalers burned penguins for fuel.

Today the largest colony at Ile aux Cochons in the Crozet Islands fell from about 500,000 pairs in the 1980s to about 60,000 in 2017, possibly because warming changed where their food is. In 1936 some king penguins were released in northern Norway but none have been officially recorded since 1949.

Fun facts

Its fluffy brown chicks once fooled explorers into thinking they were a separate species, the 'woolly penguin'.
A king penguin chick can be as brown and fluffy as a different animal; explorers once thought it was a separate woolly penguin species.
The deepest recorded dive is 343 metres.
The first scientific name came in 1778 from the English illustrator John Frederick Miller.
The penguin mascot Nils Olav of the Royal Norwegian Guard was a king penguin.