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This weekend is the Oscars, but we are going to revisit a French documentary from 10 years ago.
"Emperor Penguin Diaries", Best Documentary at the 78th Academy Awards in 2005.
This is the first time that humans have gone deep into the Antarctic continent to photograph the migration and reproduction of emperor penguins. They are the only penguin colony that still completes the entire breeding process on the Antarctic continent.
The film begins with a narration by Uncle Morgan Freeman.
"There's a race here that has stuck to this harsh Antarctic continent for millions of years. It seems like a story of life overcoming circumstances, but it's actually a story of love."
In the coldest place, there are the warmest feelings. Hope to see the end, you will have the same touch.
| On the Journey
Every April, the temperature in Antarctica is as low as -40°C. Emperor penguins must travel in groups in order to reproduce.
They jumped ashore, slid dozens of meters across the ground with their round bellies at first, and finally walked on the ice with their wobbly feet. The journey is 60-100 miles long.
The reason for the long journey is that the entire reproduction process takes nearly 5 months.
When winter is over, the glaciers will melt. Although there is abundant food in the north of the Antarctic continent (the emperor penguin mainly eats crustaceans, but also small fish and squid), the newly born little emperor penguins cannot survive in the sea.
So adult penguins have to walk to the snow-covered, food-scarce south—the sturdy, frozen ground—to mate, hatch, and wait for new life to crumble.
Although they get a little tangled before they mate, eventually they choose a single mate.
The breeding season of penguins is in the winter of each year, about April to June. They will be identified by their calls, and they will give priority to their mates from last year.
If the other party has died or cannot be found, other penguins will be selected.
Although the specific method of mate selection is still inconclusive, but basically boys take the initiative to court girls, and they will go to other single female penguins if they do not accept it.
After pairing, they will only recognize each other within this year, and at the same time, they will only be responsible for the little emperor penguins they give birth to, and will not help raise other children.
Before the start of the journey, each emperor penguin will use its life force to eat, not because they are greedy, because they will not have to eat for the next 2 months!
Emperor penguin mothers weighing 50-90 pounds will lose up to 50% of their body weight (25-45 pounds! There is no way to lose weight against the sky!) after a 2-month journey and childbirth.
Therefore, after giving birth, the emperor penguin mother must drag her weak body immediately and return to the seaside for food, otherwise she will starve to death.
At this time, the job of hatching eggs was handed over to the emperor penguin father.
The process of handing over the penguin eggs must be careful. Once a mistake is made, the cracked eggs will be frozen in a short time, and the baby penguins will no longer be hatched.
| Hello, baby penguin
said that there is no one who thinks that mother's love is great! But fatherly love is greater!
In order to wait for the mother to bring food back, the emperor penguin father must stick to the cold for another 2 months, plus the time of the "Long March" to the habitat, they can't eat for a total of 4 months! 4 months! !
During the incubation process, in order to resist the severe cold, emperor penguin fathers can only stay close to each other to keep warm, and they will change formation from time to time, so that each emperor penguin father has the opportunity to stay in a warmer place in the center of the penguin colony.
The most exciting time comes in August. The little penguin broke out of the shell in his father's warm arms.
Their feeding method determines that they can only raise one baby, and the emperor penguin parents can only put one baby in their crotch.
Penguin parents take turns returning to the beach to forage and prepare food for the penguin babies. This process requires at least 6 times.
In the process of going back and forth, the cold winter will destroy the weak lives of the emperor penguin babies, and there are even more natural enemies - seals and giant petrels, who always covet their lives.
When the little emperor penguins are 5 months old, they can try to conquer the sea, forage and play by themselves, until they are fertile at the age of 5, they will join the population and reproduce their own offspring.
| Antarctic host
watching the stupid emperor penguins, plus the narration of the English version of Morgan Freeman, is a Disney feel film that is both funny, warm and inspirational.
However, this is a documentary.
The film was shot for 13 months, with more than 120 hours (7200 minutes) of footage.
Director Luc Jaquet spent 12 years observing the living conditions of emperor penguins.
The film crew got up at 5:30 every day, and after an hour and a half of preparations, each carried more than 60 kilograms of equipment and set out for the snowfield.
They had to seize the perfect moment for the penguins to move, and they had to get used to holding the camera in 150km/h winds.
Fortunately, they came across a huge colony of emperor penguins, numbering as many as 1,200. The photographer even followed the penguins swimming in the ice water, and finally edited 80 minutes (1.11% of 7200 minutes) of precious footage and polar adventures and presented them to the audience.
However, there are countless more emperor penguins who lost their lives in this breeding.
As individual emperor penguins, they are very fragile and do not have any aggressiveness, and even do not know how to defend against attacks by skua and giant petrel, which are smaller than adult penguins, on their children.
And we, the spectators, witnessed a colony of emperor penguins. They are united, united as one, overcome one difficulty after another, and continue the legendary life of emperor penguins in the only area where no human beings are permanently inhabited - the Antarctic continent.
"Little Emperor said: We are the masters here, and even if you stand on this land, you are just honorable visitors."
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