THIS is getting out of hand. Or should I say, out of a flipper-like wing? Penguins are being lifted off their little waddling feet and held aloft as shining examples of how people should lead a decent life.
Penguins may be models of upright social behaviour – in a biomechanical sense. But some members of the Christian right in the US are going much further. To them, penguins are not only upright but also the epitome of righteousness: loving, caring parents who form lifelong monogamous relationships. They see the bird’s arduous annual migration across the shifting ice floes of the Antarctic as an allegory for the Christian spiritual journey and suggest that the birds should be held up as role models for human behaviour.
These are misguided musings at best. At worst they are dangerously misleading, for there is more to penguin society than is obvious at first sight.
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The latest wave of such anthropomorphic navel-gazing (an inappropriate metaphor perhaps, considering penguin anatomy) has been triggered by the movie March of the Penguins. This masterly natural-history documentary follows the lives and struggles of the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri). Soothingly narrated by actor Morgan Freeman, it has been a surprise box office success in the US, and may well become a Christmas hit in the UK.
It has struck a chord most spectacularly with evangelical Christians. Churches have block-booked cinemas for their members, and an organisation called the 153 House Churches Network, based in Sidney, Ohio, has set up a March of the Penguins Leadership Workshop, where viewers can discuss the impact the film has had on them. In its literature it says that they might find “many spiritual symbolisms relating to the Body of Christ, eldership/leadership, fatherhood and motherhood, and the Christian experience in general”. Many of those attending the workshops say they have been deeply affected. One of them writes on the organisation’s website (): “The penguins, even though they were faced with many obstacles, stuck together and – no matter what the obstacles were – didn’t let any outside forces [destroy their unity] or change the path they [were travelling]. [In the same way], the Christian family is supposed to help each other and stick by one another.”
Of course, believers are free to seek religious symbolism wherever they choose. But looking for it in a colony of penguins is just an invitation to be pecked at. Penguins, you see, are not quite the straight-living creatures you might suppose. For a start, a lot of penguins singularly fail to uphold traditional human family values. Around 15 per cent of adult emperors change partners every year. And some penguins engage in homosexual activities.
They are a testament to the diversity of behaviours found in animals. But you can see the perils of marking out animals, even penguins, as paragons of morally spotless conduct – and, even worse, of supposing that animal behaviours can somehow inform our own morality.
A good example of this is the media’s mild obsession over the past few years with two male chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) called Roy and Silo living in New York’s Central Park Zoo. Roy and Silo were a gay couple who successfully reared a chick from an egg donated by their keepers. To some, the birds were a great advert for gay marriage and parenting. To others, their behaviour was “unnatural”. Last week, it was reported that Silo had left Roy for a young female called Scrappy, leading to a round of self-congratulatory back-patting from anti-gay lobbyists and supporters of traditional family values.
“A lot of penguins singularly fail to uphold traditional human family values”
There’s a thing or two about penguins that it would be wise to bear in mind before embarking on moralising of this kind. For instance, while it is true that emperor penguins often adopt each other’s chicks, they do not always do so in a way the moralisers would approve of. One study found that 53 per cent of “adopted” chicks were in fact victims of kidnapping. And a study published this month in Animal Behaviour (vol 70, p 527) on the emperor’s close relative, the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus), revealed that chicks in poor condition are routinely attacked by other birds and pushed to the periphery of the group, where they are exposed to hurricane-force winds and temperatures of -30 °C. Penguins are not models of tolerance either: rare albino penguins are often pecked at and ostracised by their peers. And female Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) are known to prostitute themselves, exchanging sex for nest material (Animal Behaviour, vol 69, p 529).
All in all, adopting penguins as role models for human behaviour is a questionable practice to say the least. It highlights the broader point that justifying human actions with reference to animal behaviour – “it’s natural so it must be right” – is not only misguided, it is also illogical. Different animals have evolved different kinds of behaviours. Our own moral compass is a uniquely human construct. When it comes to finding reference points on that compass, only people will do.