The GCW Tour, Buenos Aires & Antarctica: Curiousity, Terror and Dave

Early in the trip the expeditition leaders let us know that penguins are, by their natures, curious. So if you were to sit down in the snow and make yourself small, then sit quietly for awhile, it's possible that a penguin will grow curious and come close enough that it can poke at you and, if it were allowed, you could touch it.

What the expedition leaders didn't mention is that a penguin that gets curious about a human is, by definition, doing something interesting. Moreover a penguin that is doing something interesting is like catnip to every other human who can see it, so the minute a penguin starts doing something interesting everyone in the vicinity with a camera comes running. Given the herd of approaching bipeds, the penguin's curiosity gives way to terror and the penguin runs back to the colony. Once back in the colony, the penguin is no longer doing something interesting and so everyone goes back to what they were doing.

In my case, things are worse because while penguins have exactly zero interest in Dave, humans can't seem to resist the minion. Thus, as soon as Dave comes out it becomes pretty much an impossibility to get a penguin to come close enough to have its picture taken with Dave. Hence all the long distance shots with Dave in the foreground and penguins in the background.

You'd think that with upwards of 100,000 penguins in some of these colonies there would be plenty of curious penguins to go around. So far, however, that has definitely proven not to be the case.