Mondo Knows Facts

Emperor penguin huddles rotate slowly

Birds shuffle in a continuous loop so everyone spends time in the warm middle A huddle can hold thousands of birds packed at densities of several per square metre. Each shift is only a few centimetres, small enough that the pattern rolls without breaking. Temperatures in the middle stay near 20 Celsius while the outside air is far below zero. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Emperor penguin huddles rotate slowly, photograph
Christopher.Michel ยท CC BY 2.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

British Antarctic Survey

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: penguins, huddling, antarctica

Emperor penguin huddles rotate slowly: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Birds shuffle in a continuous loop so everyone spends time in the warm middle. The figure is taken from British Antarctic Survey, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a animals fact?
Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.