If you’re sitting on a beach in Australia, there are a few animals you don’t expect to see. A lion perhaps, or a grizzly bear. Somewhere on that list is the emperor penguin. But on Friday, an emperor penguin somehow waddled onto the sands of Ocean Beach in Denmark, Western Australia.
According to a statement from Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA), the lost animal was malnourished, which was to be expected after traveling thousands of miles from its usual home in Antarctica.
Ocean Beach is located almost 4,000 kilometers north of Antarctica and it is likely that the penguin was following a current.
“What they usually do is follow certain currents where they will find lots of different types of food,” said Belinda Cannell, a research fellow at the University of Western Australia. ABC News. “So maybe those currents just moved a little further north towards Australia than normal.”
The penguin is now under the watchful eye of a wildlife rehabilitation expert, a process expected to take several weeks. A local surfer named Aaron Fowler was one of the people who happened to see the penguin on his way to the beach.
“It was huge, much bigger than a seabird and we thought: what is that thing coming out of the water? And it had a tail that stuck out like a duck,” Fowler said ABC. “He stood up in the waves and just waddled straight towards us, an emperor penguin, he was probably about a meter tall, and he wasn’t shy at all. He tried to do a slide on his stomach, thinking it was snow, I guess, and just sat with his face in the sand and stood up and shook off all the sand.
Emperor penguins are surprisingly large: they weigh up to 30 kilos and are just over a meter long. They’re in a lot of trouble right now. The warming climate threatens their habitat, their food sources and even the location of their breeding colonies.
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