Human Age to Penguin Years Calculator

Penguins are an order of flightless seabirds found only in the Southern Hemisphere. The penguins belong to the order Sphenisciformes, class Aves (birds). All modern penguins belong to the Spheniscidae family, but there are extinct species that fall outside this crown group.

The penguins are easily distinguishable from other birds and they are fully adapted to extreme cold and marine life. For example, they have warm plumage. Penguins use their wings to fly through the water just like other birds fly through the air. They can fly through the water at a speed of up to 30 km per hour. The name "penguin", which probably comes from the Celtic pen gwyn (white head), was originally used for the great auk, the now extinct counterpart (not a close relative) of the penguin in the Northern Hemisphere.

With the DNA research of Hackett et al. (2008) the position of these birds within the Neoaves has become somewhat clearer. They are probably related to the sea divers and the albatrosses and petrels and part of a much larger group known as the 'waterfowl'.

A common misconception is that penguins are only found in Antarctica. They do not occur in the North Pole, but in South Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand. In the Galapagos Islands they are found even as far as the equator. It is likely that ancestors got there via the Humboldt Current, which carries cold water from the Antarctic.

Penguins are carnivores, they catch their food underwater. They mainly eat fish, crustaceans and small squid. What the species catch among themselves is very diverse. The largest species, the emperor penguin, eats ice fish, krill and squid. The king penguin sometimes eats squid, but mainly feeds on small lantern fish. The three smaller species (adelie, gentoo and chinstrap penguin) mainly feed on krill.

Human to Penguin years calculator: How old am I in penguin years? A human's 1 year is equal to about 0.20 to 0.27 years of a penguin's lifespan. We've created an easy-to-understand chart that shows your age by converting it to a penguin's age.