An Emperor penguin chick sits on its parents feet in Atka Bay, Antarctica. Wednesday marks National Penguin Awareness Day, a day devoted to celebrating penguins around the world. Newscom
Penguins at the St. Louis Zoo in Missouri enjoy the 20 degree Fahrenheit weather as they stroll outside on Jan. 10. Keepers walk the penguins each Sunday in the winter when the temperature outside is below 50 degrees. Jeff Roberson/AP
Chinstrap penguins are seen on ice in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, a British overseas territory, in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Newscom
Roxy the rockhopper penguin is seen next to a Valentine's Day card at the London Zoo in February 2009. Roxy is the most adopted animal at the zoo and has her own page on a social networking site with more than 400 friends, according to the zoo. Lefteris Pitarakis/AP/FILE
Adelie penguins dive into water in Antarctica in December. Kyodo/Newscom
A boy watches a penguin dive into the water at the Epson Shinagawa Aqua Stadium in Tokyo, Japan, on Jan. 2. Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Newscom
Climate activists dress like penguins to protest outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in March 2009. Francois Lenoir/Reuters
A two-month-old king penguin chick lifts the ends of its feet off the frozen ice and snow at its enclosure in the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland on Dec. 21. The chick is the first king penguin to be born at the zoo in over five years. David Moir/Reuters
Keeper Tim Savage makes a record of penguins at the London Zoo on Jan. 5 during the annual head count of more than 750 species at the zoo. Kevin Coombs/Reuters
A trio of adolescent Magellanic penguins waddle through the San Francisco Zoo to their new home on Penguin Island as part of the zoo's annual 'March of the Penguins' event on Aug. 12. The chicks, who hatched earlier in the year and attended fish school at the Avian Conservation Center, graduated and were able to join the zoo's 50 other penguins. Eric Risberg/AP
Penguins are seen at a treatment center before their release on a beach in Blouberg, South Africa. The South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds released 84 African penguins back into the wild after they were treated for oil pollution obtained in Namibia. Schalk van Zuydam/AP
Emperor penguins from the film 'March of the Penguins' are seen here. Newscom/FILE
Rapidly growing penguin chicks, clad in their brown, downy feathers, explore the Bay of Isles penguin colony where the chicks group together for warmth and safety while their parents are feeding in the sea off of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the south Atlantic Ocean. Newscom
Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have found that melting sea ice could lead to dramatic declines in populations of emperor penguins.
Emperor penguins depend on the sea ice that rings the continent of Antarctic, so it's no surprise that global warming, which is expected to melt some of that ice, may be bad news for these flightless, 4-foot (1.2-meter) tall birds.
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