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Each penguin has its own little space of soil where it digs a little rough nest or hole for sitting on its egg and grow up its chick.

Penguins, for this purpose, form very stable couples for all their life or, at least, for one year, with a division of duties between the male and the female. The female lays usually one egg at the beginning of summer, except for the Emperor penguin that breeds in winter.

After the chicks' birth, the mother remains for many days in the same position and gives it partially digested fish, gushed out from her stomach. In many species, the male alternates with the female in sitting on the egg or caring the chick and going off-shore for many days for fishing.

The chick grows up very quickly becoming nearly as big as its parents within few weeks, but its plumes are still not adapted for swimming in the ocean because not impermeable; so, a moulting is necessary to replace them with the definitive adult plumes and being ready for swimming in the ocean, at the end of summer.

- The heroic Emperor penguin.

Every year, in the Antarctic continent, the terrible winter arrives, with temperatures dropping down to -50, -60C or even less and here is the miracle of the survival for the Emperor penguin, the largest species of penguin (about 110-115 cm for 30 Kg of weight).

At the beginning of the winter, they're very fat, for all the fish eaten in summer.
In these conditions, males and females can resist for weeks without eating and they stay altogether, in groups of some hundreds of individuals standing up very close one another to keep themselves warm.
In these compact groups, who stays at the exterior can't resist much to the cold, so, there's a continuous and slow position exchange between external and internal penguins, so that a little cold for everyone in turn is not dangerous for anybody. In these conditions, they resist heroically for months against the cold, the darkness and the strong winds.

As reported above, Emperor penguins are the only penguin species breeding in winter and the male starts holding their only egg, just laid by his partner in May or June, and place it over their feet, well covered by their low belly and they made the same chicks, after their birth. After having laid her egg, the female has consumed a lot of energy and she must recover them going in the sea for food.

So, she leaves the egg to the male, after a delicate transfer from the upper side of her feet to the one of the male, to avoid every contact with the ice that would

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