Do penguins migrate?
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Do penguins migrate?

Some species of penguin (e.g. African) return to their colonies on land more or less every night throughout the year. Others simply arrive at their colonies at the beginning of the breeding season and leave after they have moulted at the end of the season. Exactly where they spend the intervening months is not fully researched, but they remain at sea - they do not, in the strict sense of the word, migrate.

Emperor penguins have been tracked using radio satellite transmitters on their backs and have been found to swim right around the Earth, just north of the Antarctic pack ice.

Magellanic penguins normally keep well south, however there have been recent reports of them turning up on the beaches in Brazil in quite large numbers. This unusual behaviour is believed to be caused by global warming and the penguins losing their way.