The Plight of the Penguin

••• Winner of the New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year Award •••


“This book is excellent, everything it should be: a scampering read, fast and funny; excellent natural history, observed first hand; and all underpinned by the deep ideas of modern biology…” Colin Tudge, Science Journalist/Writer


Penguins have a curious magnetism that compels us to love them. Is it because they seem like us? They walk like us. They dress is tuxedoes like us. And perhaps, because of this, we think they should act like us. We’ve created a human image of penguins; cute clones that marry for life and live happily ever after as devoted parents, rearing their families in a world of snow and ice.


Zoologist Lloyd Spencer Davis dispels this fairytale view of penguins, replacing it with startling revelations about their lifestyles, seduction techniques and survival secrets. These are not colourless little polar people; these are raunchy birds that want to be fish.


The author’s clear-eyed, direct style has a zest and wit that conveys the complexity of the natural world; the world where these birds lead such astonishing lives. His enthusiasm, his sense of wonder and beauty are delightfully infectious, his dynamic advocacy of the conservationist’s cause wholly persuasive.


Foreword by Colin Tudge


About the Author

Lloyd Spencer Davis is a world authority on penguins. He's the inaugural Stuart Professor of Science Communication at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He has been studying penguins for well over three decades and has published numerous scientific articles and books on penguins. He co-instigated the first ever international conference on penguins and was senior editor of a major academic text Penguin Biology. His book on penguins written for a popular audience, Penguin, won a PEN Best First Book Award and he has gone on to win several more major awards for his writing.


Lloyd Spencer Davis is also an award-winning documentary maker. His films include Meet the Real Penguins – which he wrote and directed _ and for which he received over a dozen international awards.


Lloyd Spencer Davis has also won numerous awards for his research and photography, both of which imbue the major website he runs on penguins (PenguinWorld.com). Currently he is the Director of the Centre for Science Communication, the world's largest postgraduate facility for popularising science.