As night falls in Antarctica, biting winds cast horizontal snow across the dark backs of a mass of huddled emperor penguins. The temperature is 50 below zero, the gales are 90 miles per hour, and the sun won’t rise again for more than two months. NATURE captures these amazing — and well-dressed — flightless birds shivering on the ice as well as gliding through their most comfortable element, the water — a balmy bath compared to the air temperature above — where the emperors can hold their breath up to 20 minutes and dive a mile deep. Meanwhile, on the shores of Zavodovski Island, an active volcano, two million chinstrap penguins breed and travel on their own “superhighway” between the sea and their colonies on higher ground — taking care to evade the occasional 12-foot long leopard seal, which can consume six penguins in an hour.

Emperors and kings, chinstraps and Adélies — NATURE follows the penguins’ difficult journey through the cycle of seasons and explores how a changing climate is affecting their habitat and survival.

Online, our interactive penguin map will take you around the Antarctic region for a closer look at six penguin species and their habitats. An essay will help reveal why krill is both the penguins’ favorite food, and the foundation of the Antarctic ecosystem. Also, read more about the issues related to climate change and its potential impact on Antarctica. Finally, watch our penguin Photo Essay, and then test your understanding of the penguin’s cold-weather adaptations in the Penguin Secrets of Survival Challenge. Buy the DVD. Online content for Penguins of the Antarctic was originally posted November 2006.

In 1997, “Under Antarctic Ice” filmmaker Norbert Wu journeyed to Antarctica for the first time on a special grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. government’s leading funder of scientific research on the frozen continent. But the United States isn’t alone in conducting research in Antarctica. Currently, 17 other nations — from Russia and China to Brazil and Uruguay — also operate Antarctic research centers. And each year, thousands of scientists (and even a few filmmakers) get to visit these remarkable laboratories, and conduct studies focused on everything from the world’s climate to the land mass locked beneath the ice.

Antarctica has long been a magnet for scientists due to its size, location, weather, and isolation from the rest of world. It is among the most pristine places on earth, making it a perfect spot to study how pollutants travel through the atmosphere. Sadly, polar researchers have found that even deadly toxins, such as mercury, can travel vast distances and end up in Antarctic snow, plants, and animals. And in the 1980s, they realized that chlorine compounds routinely used in aerosol sprays, air conditioners and other products were carried to Antarctic skies, where they ate a hole in the protective ozone layer, letting in dangerous ultraviolet light. Such studies led directly to an international agreement to reduce the use of ozone-eating compounds.

Today, Antarctica is a key outpost for global warming studies. Cores taken from its thick ice sheet hold tiny air bubbles that have allowed scientists to track the historical buildup of the global warming gas carbon dioxide, formed by burning fossil fuels. In essence, the cores are time capsules that reach back thousands of years, to a time when there was less carbon dioxide in our skies. And the continent’s massive sea ice sheets may act as an early warning system for warming’s arrival: Some scientists say the recent collapse of several major sheets signals the beginning of a potentially dangerous warming period. Water locked in polar ice, for instance, could be released, helping raise sea levels and flood coastal cities.

Antarctica is also among the darkest places on earth, with its inky winters lasting nearly half the year, making it ideal for astronomers. They have built state-of-the-art telescopes that sweep the skies for celestial objects created at the birth of our universe. Antarctica’s location at the bottom of the globe also means it sits at a perfect place to study Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields, making it a haven for astrophysicists. And in the future, the polar ice may help provide a kind of shield for a deep-buried instrument designed to spot neutrinos, mysterious high-energy particles produced by the exploding stars and other objects. Scientists want to bury the instrument, dubbed “Ice Cube,” so that the ice helps sift out unwanted atomic particles. The ice also holds amazing meteorites, including some that started life as rocks on the surface of Mars.

Marine biologists love Antarctica because its seas are filled with remarkable but poorly understood creatures, from fish and crustaceans that make their own anti-freeze to whales and seals that travel thousands of miles in search of food. And on land, researchers are amazed by the ability of some plants and animals to survive the harsh conditions. There is even a huge underground lake locked thousands of feet beneath the ice, called Lake Vostock, that scientists believe may hold specially adapted life forms found nowhere else on earth. They are trying to design a special probe that could drill and melt its way into the lake and collect water samples without contaminating it with bacteria or pollutants from the outside world.

Scientists also value Antarctica because it is a land without borders. Under an international treaty, Antarctica is open to all, and scientific findings are shared. Many projects are multinational, and a visit to any base is often an experience in multiculturalism, with scientists from around the world sharing common quarters.

Of course, getting there isn’t easy. While many of the bases are perched on the continent’s edge, and can be reached by icebreaking ships in the right season, others are inland, sometimes right at the South Pole itself. In places, travel can require special aircraft equipped with skis, helicopters, and rugged snow buggies that crawl across the ice on tank treads. While traffic may be sparse, the drivers still have to be careful, because you never know when a crevasse may appear before your vehicle and threaten to swallow it whole. And even minor breakdowns can be life-threatening if you aren’t prepared for the weather.

Still, most scientists relish the opportunity to work in Antarctica. A hardy few even stay throughout the winter, spending months in near-total darkness, cut off from supply flights. The scientific rewards, they say, are well worth the sacrifice.

Who can resist the magnetic allure of a baby? The presence of little ones of any species invariably generates instant attention and concern from onlookers. In fact, it seems that both humans and animals are hard-wired to find youngsters adorable. The practical and essential reasons why the very young have an ability to play on our heart strings are explored in Baby Tales.

Baby Tales demonstrates how young animals learn and develop, and examines the role of “cuteness” in helping to forge and solidify bonds between mother and offspring. Many newborns in the animal kingdom are entirely dependent upon their mothers — and sometimes their fathers, as well — for survival. And, especially in the wild, nurturing and protecting the young can require enormous effort, courage, and self-sacrifice. The cuteness of offspring creates a strong visual bond that helps evoke a caring response in parents, which must spend months, if not years, feeding, protecting, and teaching their young to survive on their own.

To order a copy of Baby Tales, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Baby Tales was originally posted March 2001.

Meet those well-loved, well-dressed flightless birds in THE WORLD OF PENGUINS.

We all have an image of penguins gliding on ice at the South Pole — images that come from childhood. But contrary to popular belief penguins live beyond Antarctica, and can be found in New Zealand, southern Africa, and South America. While some species have adapted to life in regions that reach 100 degrees below zero others are comfortable in temperatures 100 degrees above. The classic tuxedoed penguins are found in Antarctica, along with the largest, the Emperor penguins, while Jackass penguins flourish in Namibia and South Africa and Humboldts live on a desert landscape near the coasts of Peru and Chile.

Though they are considered birds — they lay eggs and have feathers — penguins spend most of their lives at sea as fast and powerful predators — a stark contrast to the clumsy, waddling penguin on land. The penguin’s powerful flippers, gives them the ability to dive and hunt at ocean depths where no other bird can go.

No matter how awkward it is, every penguin must return to land. Each year penguins forsake the sea and struggle ashore to mate and lay eggs. Rockhopper penguins climb 90 foot cliffs to their nest; Adelies travel 3,000 perilous miles to breeding colonies.

Join NATURE and travel to “The World of Penguins” to discover the great variety of these aquatic birds.

To order a copy of The World of Penguins, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for The World of Penguins was originally posted March 1997.