Can penguins fly? While penguins cannot fly in the air, they can fly underwater due to their streamlined bodies and specialized wings. Like other bird species, penguins can fly through the water because they have adapated to their primary environment. Puffins have also adpated with their ability to fly both in the air and in water. This may seem strange until we consider the similarities between air and water when it comes to both being fluids with different densities.
Let’s talk about flying. And when I say flying, I am talking about birds, not helicopters or planes. There is something about seeing an animal that can take to the air with just its own power. Now, to be able to fly you must have two forces that keep you moving and floating: thrust and lift. Birds flap their wings for thrust and the shape of their wings provides upward lift.
If we take a look at a bird at take-off, you will see they lean forward and prepare their wings to flap to get the forward thrust needed to move air over and under their wings. The shape of the wing is critical– to get the lift needed to fly, birds need to have the air passing over the wing moving faster than the air under the wing. If you could see the molecules that move around a wing, the ones that go over the arched part of the wing move faster than the ones moving under the wing. This increases the air pressure below the wing and gives the bird lift to fly.
So, we know a bit about birds flying - but what about penguins? Can they fly? If we are more specific and ask if penguins can fly in the air, the answer is no. But if we change the location, the answer is yes. Penguins can fly. They just fly in the water, instead of in the air.
This is a bird that spends much of its time hunting for fish in the ocean. They need to be very fast to be able to catch their meals. How fast do you think penguins can fly in water? With their streamlined bodies and wings made for water, penguins can fly at speeds up to 30 miles an hour! (That’s faster than the fastest human can run!)
This is one of Nature’s fantastic stories of adaptation. There are some birds that swim under water, like cormorants, but they are paddlers, keeping their wings tucked close in. They only fly in the air. But a few birds, like puffins, fly in the air and can also fly underwater like penguins.
This brings up an important detail that we sometimes forget. Air - like water - is a fluid. Because we don’t see air or ‘feel’ air, we forget that it has molecules in it, just like other fluids. The main difference is that air molecules are much less dense than the other fluids we usually think of, like liquid water, which is 800 times denser than air.