How do Penguins Kiss?
Penguins are flightless aquatic birds. Though they are birds they have much unique behavior from other birds. But as any other birds, penguins kiss using their beaks. The penguins rub their beak on their mates or show their love in the action of preening the feathers. The behavior of kissing amongst penguins is most common among other species of birds.
Sometimes penguins rub their body with their mates that are assumed to be as a way of showing affection and also as a way of producing warmth to help survive the frigid atmosphere.
Penguins experience a snug with their mates by pecking or rubbing over the bills of each other. By kissing using the beak they communicate the affection that they have on one another.
Penguins also have a surprising behavior to choose the partner and stay with the mate till the end of their lives like humans. If the partner dies, one of the couples yet prefers to stay single.
When penguins get enough with kissing, they rub the beak on their body which is also a way of kissing in penguins’ behavior. They also bang their heads while kissing, which is also usually called as headbanging kiss. Like humans, penguins love to kiss keeping their eyes closed.
The action of rubbing the beak, preening and rubbing the beak on the body defines the sexual approach amongst the couples. While the parents rub their beak or peck on their chick it is the expression of affection and cares towards the little one.
There is also a term that is often discussed among people when speaking about penguins is the ‘penguin’s kiss’. After the long period of incubating the chicks from the winter, the male penguins take a rest while the female penguins come from the ocean carrying half-digested food for the chick.
The female penguins transferred the food from its throat to the chicks’ mouth and referred to as penguin’s kissing. Female penguins do this to save the offspring from death.
The action of penguins to serve their chicks is similar to that of other birds with few distinct mannerisms. Also, the parent especially the mothers, peck the feathers of their chicks to make them comfortable and ease out the job during the first molting period of the chicks.
The rubbing of the body and face also contributes warmth during winter along with love shared compassionately between the couple. When the partner preens the feathers, the mate gets a kind of soothing feeling and a sense of support.
Also there is an interesting courtship period that the penguin’s experience is that; they try to discover how the mate is compatible in all the ways to continue living with him/her.
During the courtship session, we can also find penguins rubbing their beak with each other.
Some chicks also kiss the siblings to share the love and communicate the care. We can find this among the king penguins’ chicks, because they are the penguin species which lay two eggs at a time and make them survive.
Conclusion:
Like humans and chimpanzees, penguins cannot kiss by their mouth since they are birds by nature and blessed with a beak. There are 17 living penguin species.
Even though all the 17 species are from the same family of flightless birds, they have a different approach to their mates and some species don’t have the same mate for the entire life.
There are fights regarding choosing the mates and fight between the previous mate and the existing one. But their way of kissing is all the same. Also, apart from kissing, penguins scream their sentiments to the mate to communicate how much they love their partners.
Penguins are good parents and they are very kind to their mates. They love kissing and want to be loved by their mates very often by rubbing their face and body and also by preening with their beak passionately.
References:
https://www.livescience.com/40874-animal-sex-penguins.html
https://animals.mom.me/penguins-kiss-9585.html
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150714-why-do-we-kiss
https://www.yourtango.com/experts/dr-charles-dr-elizabeth-schmitz/learning-about-love-penguin
