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The Natural History Museum has published Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin, a section about Adélie Penguin’s sexual proclivities from a paper titled Natural History of the Adélie Penguin. Produced by Dr George Murray Levick, a scientist who spent the Antarctic summer of 1911-12 observing the colony of Adélies at Cape Adare, the original paper recorded the unusual sexual activities among penguins; however, since the startling details were considered so shocking, the section was removed from the official accounts to preserve decency.
The “depraved” sexual acts of “hooligan” males were so distressing that he recorded the “perverted” activities in Greek, to make them inaccessible to the average reader. There are references to promiscuous sex between unpaired male and female penguins; homosexual sex between male penguins; instances of Adélie penguins engaging in rape, gang rape, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, as well as necrophilia with penguins, some of which had died the previous year.
Douglas Russell, a curator of birds at the Natural History Museum who has had the paper published in the journal Polar Record, along with an analysis of Dr Levick’s work, noted:
“The account, based upon Levick’s detailed field observations at Cape Adare (71°18′S, 170°09′E) during the course of the British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910, commented on frequency of sexual activity, autoerotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex and homosexual behaviour. His observations were however accurate, valid and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving of publication. “
Russell explained to The Guardian’s sister Sunday newspaper, The Observer, that the penguins’ sexual inexperience is to blame for the antics that so disgusted Dr Levick.
“Adélies gather at their colonies in October to start to breed. They have only a few weeks to do that and young adults simply have no experience of how to behave. Many respond to inappropriate cues. Hence the seeming depravity of their behaviour. For example, a dead penguin, lying with its eyes half-open, is very similar in appearance to a compliant female. The result is the so-called necrophilia that Levick witnessed and which so disgusted him.”
According to Russell, Dr Levick’s paper was too much for the times, that’s why it was kept a secret for 100 years.
“He submitted this extraordinary and graphic account of sexual behaviour of the adelie penguins, which the academic world of the post-Edwardian era found a little too difficult to publish… What is happening there is not in any way analogous to necrophilia in the human context. It is the males seeing the positioning that is causing them to have a sexual reaction. They are not distinguishing between live females who are awaiting congress in the colony, and dead penguins from the previous year which just happen to be in the same position.”
Dr Levick is the only scientist to have studied an entire breeding season at Cape Adare. According to The Daily Mail, Captain Scott had launched his bid to be the first man to reach the South Pole, but perished with his companions in 1912, after being beaten to the pole by the Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen.
But Dr Levick survived, despite having been forced to spend an entire Antarctic winter in an ice cave with five companions and few supplies after the expedition ship, Terra Nova, was blocked by ice on its way to rescue them. The men battled the perilous polar winter and survived, in part, by eating penguin meat and seal blubber.
Come see our Adelie penguins brought back by survivors of Scott’s 1910 Antarctic mission #penguinawarenessday pic.twitter.com/Y7Dr3HBOv1
— DM Nature Gallery (@DMNature) January 20, 2016
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