Could it be the last Emperor?
MILLIONS fell in love with the noble creatures in hit movie March Of The Penguins as they battled to survive in the coldest weather conditions on Earth.
But now the magnificent Emperor penguins of the Antarctic are in even greater peril — because it is getting too WARM.
Numbers have crashed by up to half as their breeding ground is melting away at an alarming rate.
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And conservation group WWF is warning we are in danger of seeing the last of the Emperors.
Scientists blame climate change, which has raised the surface temperature in their habitat from minus 17.3°C to minus 14.7°C.
The result has been a big fall in the number of shrimp-like krill, the penguins’ favourite food.
Overfishing has deprived the penguins of other grub.
At the most-monitored colony, Pointe Geologie on Terre Adelie on Antarctica’s east coast, numbers have fallen from 12,000 in the Seventies to 6,000 today.
The WWF’s Debbie Chapman said: “The Emperor penguin faces a battle to survive as a species.
“They can endure blizzards with temperatures that plummet to minus 49°C.
“They can trek for weeks to fetch food for their young. But they are struggling to overcome today’s problems in a severely threatened ecosystem.”
Emperors are the biggest of all living penguins and the only ones to breed in the Antarctic winter.
They are social birds who are so graceful at sea that they were originally classified as fish.
But on land they waddle like stiff-backed waiters or comically slide on their bellies for more than 60 miles to reach suitable breeding spots.
The female lays a 1lb egg in May or June, the equivalent of choosing December or January in the Northern Hemisphere.
She has to return to the sea immediately to avoid starvation and so carefully gives the egg to the male, who keeps it warm in a brood pouch above his flippers.
If the egg falls to the ice the unhatched chick inevitably dies as it cannot cope with the cold.
The male incubates the egg for 65 days and has to go without food for the whole time, so he lives off his fat.
He can even feed the chick on a milky substitute should it hatch before the female returns.
For two months after it hatches the chick is kept off the ice by its parents.
Then all the chicks in a colony congregate in giant creches.
A few adults take turns to look after them while the others feed.
Sea ice covers 40 per cent less of the water off parts of Antarctica than it did 25 years ago, according to the WWF report.
Warmer temperatures and stronger winds have meant increasingly thin sea ice.
This often breaks up before the summer, drowning those chicks whose parents are lucky enough to find them sufficient food.
Three further penguin species from a total of 17 are also threatened by melting ice and disappearing food.
Adelie penguin numbers on the west Antarctic peninsula fell from 15,000 in 1975 to 5,000 four years ago. Today that figure may be down to just 4,000.
Chinstrap penguins on the once aptly named Penguin Island, in the South Shetlands, fell from 5,155 in 1965 to 2,672 in 2004.
At Admiralty Bay, on King George Island, gentoo penguins fell from 5,000 to 3,000 in 13 years.
Adelies and chinstraps there have fallen to 2,000 each. In the Seventies there were 16,000 Adelies and 10,000 chinstraps.
There is some hope as changing conditions have helped some colonies to show a small rise.
But these increases may be temporary as the number of krill have dropped 80 per cent in 30 years.