People all around the world speak different languages. Some of you may have friends who speak a different language than you. Penguins are very similar! Each group of penguins has their own unique language. Penguins live in groups called colonies, like their own big family. Some penguins have bigger families than others, and the African penguin has one of the biggest families in the penguin world. African penguins are a special type of penguin that live on the beach and have a black band and unique dots on their fluffy white chests (African Penguin | San Diego Zoo Animals & Plants). They are also the loudest of the penguin species. African penguins do not like to be quiet!
How do the penguins communicate with each other? Penguins have a special organ in their throats called a syrinx. They control the muscles in this area to make different sounds. The sounds are important because the penguins use different calls to say what they want, similar to how we use our words to say what we want. What does this sound like? In African penguins, when a baby penguin wants one of its parents, it makes a noise that sounds like peep peep, and then when a male penguin is defending his home and telling other penguins to go away, it sounds more like a donkey, hee-haw! But it gets a bit more complicated than this because each colony of penguins has their own special language (Favaro & Pichegru, 2017).
A group of scientists in Italy went to three different zoos and took recordings of the colonies of penguins talking to each other. The scientists listened to how long the penguins talked to each other and how loudly or quietly the penguins spoke. The scientists noticed that the penguins in one zoo sounded different than those in another zoo. Like how you learn words from your parents and friends, penguins can also learn from others. That means if the penguins from one zoo meet penguins from a different zoo, they wouldn’t understand each other at first because they speak different languages. The penguins could still become friends and learn from each other over time, though, because the scientists also found that after spending three years together, penguins in one colony taught each other and copied each other and now sound even more similar. So, these two penguins from different zoos could teach each other their languages and learn to understand each other over time to become best friends.
References:
African Penguin | San Diego Zoo Animals & Plants. (n.d.). Retrieved October 19, 2023, from https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/african-penguin
Baciadonna, L., Solvi, C., Del Vecchio, F., Pilenga, C., Baracchi, D., Bandoli, F., Isaja, V., Gamba, M., & Favaro, L. (2022). Vocal accommodation in penguins ( Spheniscus demersus ) as a result of social environment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 289(1978), 20220626. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0626
Favaro, L., & Pichegru, L. (2017). Penguins: Behavioural Ecology and Vocal Communication. In J. Vonk & T. Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior (pp. 1–9). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_844-1
